Embedded Files
Posted Date: July 14, 2025
Goodsol's work titled "QCON: Seamless QoE-Aware 5G Streaming via Multi-Connectivity" has been accepted to USENIX Symposium on Network Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI '26)
Congratulations!
QCON: Seamless QoE-Aware 5G Streaming via Multi-Connectivity
Goodsol LEE, Junhong Min, Seyeon Kim, Juheon Yi, Kwang Taik Kim, Mung Chiang, Sangtae Ha,
Kyunghan Lee and Saewoong Bahk
Abstract
Mobile real-time video (RTS) apps—cloud gaming and AR/VR—require consistent high throughput and low latency to satisfy user Quality of Experience (QoE), yet today’s wireless links fluctuate wildly. While multi-path solutions seem promising to tackle such single-link fluctuations, existing transportlevel solutions require multiple cellular subscriptions, which most users don’t have. In this paper, we leverage 5G multiconnectivity, which allows simultaneous connection to multiple base stations (e.g., 5G and 4G) and is already deployed in commercial networks. However, our measurements show RTS applications still suffer from single-link fluctuations due to operators’ deliberate policies restricting multi-connectivity to conserve 4G backup links regardless of application demands. To optimize application QoE while respecting operator policies, we present QCON, a QoE-driven multi-connectivity solution that efficiently utilizes backup links based on precise application QoE. For practical deployment, we design QoE Monitor to infer application QoE within the RAN and develop multi-link scheduling to optimize both QoE and radio resource efficiency. We also design priority-based re-injection utilizing RAN link recovery mechanism to prevent video stalls. Our prototype implementation of QCON on a RAN intelligent controller within an Open-RAN testbed demonstrates 2.1× improvements of bitrates, enhancing tail frame rates by 4-5× with efficient backup link use compared to existing multi-link scheduling schemes.
Report abuse