Research

Edge Video Streaming System Design in Multi-user Scenario

Supervised by Prof. Tom H. Luan at Xidian University.

[PDF | IEEE Xplore]

Optimized the watching experience of multiple local users via adaptive playback and dynamic channel resource allocation.

• Present a scalable and practical solution for this NP-hard nonconvex cross layer joint optimization problem by using both deep reinforcement learning and classic stochastic optimization methods. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that the state value estimated by the critic network is used to guide the channel resource allocation in the physical layer.

• Paper expected to submit to IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing soon.

Cross-layer Optimization

Deep reinforcement learning & Lyapunov Optimization

A Scalable solution.

Critic Net for Demand estimation

Bridge the gap between two layers.

Abstract

The increasing demand of online high-quality video streaming has brought huge challenges to the traditional client- server video streaming systems due to high feedback delay, rigorous bandwidth requirement, and the lack of a mechanism of centralized resource management between users. In this work, we propose AMIS-MU, an edge computing-based mobile video streaming system that optimizes the watching experience of users via playback adaptation and channel resource allocation. Thanks to the plenty of computation capacity at the edge server, all the decision-making and computation-intensive tasks are conducted at the edge without imposing any burden on mobile users. Video playback speed manipulation, bitrate adaptation, and dynamic channel allocation empower AMIS-MU to optimize the quality of experience (QoE) from both the application and the physical layer. To solve this cross-layer joint optimization problem, we creatively leverage the state value function obtained from the deep reinforcement learning (DRL) as a bridge between these two layers which significantly reduces the problem complexity. And we resort to Lyapunov optimization to solve the non-convex sub-channel and transmit power allocation problem to provide users with rational and fair network services. Experiments show that AMIS-MU outperforms other existing algorithms in terms of average QoE and fairness.

"Do not discard the Critic Network after training."