Multipath MMT-Based Approach for Streaming High Quality Video Over Multiple Wireless Access Networks
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Multipath MMT-Based Approach for Streaming High Quality Video over Multiple Wireless Access Networks Samira Afzala,∗, Christian Esteve Rothenberg.b, Vanessa Testonic, Prakash Koland, Imed Bouazizie aDepartment of Electronic Systems Engineering, Polytechnic School, University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo,SP, Brazil bSchool of Electrical and Computer Engineering (FEEC), University of Campinas (Unicamp), Campinas, SP, Brazil. cSamsung Research Brazil (SRBR), Campinas, SP, Brazil. dSamsung Research America (SRA), Dallas, TX, USA eQualcomm, San Diego, CA, USA Abstract Demand for video streaming content and multimedia services have increased dramatically. Delivering high throughput and low delay video data are real challenges to provide and sustain high quality mobile video streaming services. One type of solution to provide quality of experience is to exploit multipath strategies by taking advantage of the multiple network interfaces that are currently available in most wireless devices. Our work aims at delivering contributions by exploring the advantages of multipath video streaming using the MPEG Media Transport protocol. MPEG Media Transport is a multimedia application layer protocol with the capability of hybrid media delivery. In this article, we propose a Content-Aware and Path-Aware (CAPA) scheduling strategy for this protocol, considering both video features and path condition. The performance of our CAPA proposal is evaluated using ns-3 DCE with different realistic multipath network scenarios. We evaluate the performance of CAPA over heterogeneous wireless networks under congested network and wireless lossy network conditions, which are common network situations with significant adverse effects on video quality. Our approach yields considerable video quality improvement in both scenarios compared to Path- Aware strategy and a simple scheduling strategy, called Evenly Splitting. For congested network scenario, CAPA could increase PSNR, respectively, by up to 4.25 dB (12.97%), and 7.22 dB (20.58%) compared to Path-Aware and Evenly Splitting strategies. It could also improve SSIM, respectively, by up to 0.033 (3.78%), and 0.102 (12.54%) compared to Path-Aware and Evenly Splitting strategies. For wireless lossy network scenario, CAPA increases PSNR, respectively, by up to 6.84 dB (20.30%), and 9.43 dB (30.32%) compared to Path-Aware and Evenly Splitting strategies. The proposed strategy also provides improvements in terms of SSIM, by up to 0.100 (12.72%), and 0.113 (14.23%) compared to Path-Aware and Evenly Splitting strategies, respectively. We also evaluate how proposed CAPA handles the streaming of different video bitrates under congested network conditions to provide sufficient video quality. Finally, we provide an initial validation of fairness of CAPA to confirm fair access to the resources available across all paths. Keywords: heterogeneous wireless networks, multipath video streaming, content-aware and path-aware, path-awareness, packet scheduling strategy 1. Introduction works. Delivering high-quality video streaming services makes 15 the task of providing real-time wireless transmission of multi- Video streaming is a major part of the current network traffic. media while ensuring Quality of Experience (QoE) quite chal- Applications such as 4K Ultra HD (UHD) and 8K UHD live or lenging due to bandwidth and time constrains [3]. on-demand video, video conferences and online cloud games Several solutions have been proposed to provide QoE for 5 have become considerably popular over the past few years. High bandwidth demand technologies such as, Virtual Real- video streaming. One type of approach is packet loss re- ity (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) as well 20 silient methods [4, 5] such as automatic repeat request (ARQ), as Multi-View Video (MVV) have evolved fast and become true Forward Error Correction (FEC), and Error Resilient Coding in the near future. According to the annual Cisco’s report [1], (ERC), which cope with noisy networks by reducing the ef- fect of data loss. Adaptive streaming mechanisms [6, 7, 8] are 10 IP video traffic would take 82 percent of all consumers’ Internet traffic by 2021. However, the real problem behind these tech- also remarkable options to dynamically adjust the video deliv- nologies is the huge bitrate they produce [2], since it is insuf- 25 ery data rate to the underlying network conditions. ficient to transmit it through the current available IP based net- Another line of research in the literature to improve QoE is Network Coding (NC). NC proves its benefits in network per- formance, especially in lossy wireless networks and multicast ∗Autor en correspondencia. Email address: [email protected] (Samira Afzal) scenarios [9]. In NC, packets from the same flow (intra-session) URL: https://intrig.dca.fee.unicamp.br/ (Samira Afzal) 30 or different flows (inter-session) can be combined into a sin- Preprint submitted to Journal of LATEX Templates November 13, 2020 70 the principal property of hybrid media delivery, which refers Multipath to the combination of delivered media components over differ- wireless ent types of networks. For example, one could be a broadcast Video streaming video Multipath wireless streaming communication channel, and another broadband or two simultaneous broadband channels can be combined. Multipath 75 Altogether, as shown in Figure 1, the focus of this paper is on Video wireless streaming communication improving the MMT protocol with multipath strategies to de- over MMT over MMT liver improved video quality of experience for real-time wire- less video streaming. In a nutshell, we propose investigating MMT protocol novel multipath scheduling strategies that consider both video 80 features (content-aware) and path characteristics (path-aware). Paper focus Considering video content features in the scheduling strategy Text helps to define the priority of each packet, and subsequently, unequal importance packets can be sent through different net- Figure 1: The focus of this paper is the confluence of MMT protocol for video work paths based on network-level quality estimators. CAPA streaming applications over heterogeneous wireless networks. 85 improves video streaming QoE by increasing goodput, decreas- ing packet losses, and end-to-end delay. This article is an extended version of our previous work [16] gle packet and transmitted [10]. One significant feature of NC published in 2018. We would like to point out the main ex- is that it allows intermediate nodes to perform re-encoding of tended contributions to the original work in the following. packets leading to improved throughput [10, 11, 12]. Besides that, NC outperforms simple retransmission strategies, specifi- 90 • While only congested network situation was considered in 35 cally for multicasting [13, 14, 15], since it reduces the number our original work, we also study wireless lossy network of packets transmission. However, NC solutions are incompat- situation, where channels have high burst losses due to ible with some protocols such as TCP [9], add extra coding wireless errors (e.g., lossy channels, noise or interface), and decoding requirements, and impose huge challenges when in this current paper. According to [24], losses due to trying to combine packets from different flows with different 95 lossy network situation could even occur more than con- 40 transmission rates. gestion condition in the real network. Since such burst Another type of solution is to exploit multipath strategies [6, wireless losses have a high adverse effect on the perceived 16, 17] by taking advantage of the multiple network interfaces, video quality, it is well worth to consider it. Therefore, the which also refers to multihoming, that are currently available in proposed scheduling strategy defined in the original work most wireless devices (e.g., laptops, tablets, smartphones). A100 has been improved considering lossy path condition in the 45 user connected to more than one network opens the opportunity Markov model and related packet distribution strategies in to leverage different video delivery strategies to provide better order to guarantee video quality in wireless lossy condi- coverage and overall more stable network connectivity by cir- tion. cumventing congested network paths and aggregating the band- width available over multiple paths. One concept presented in • In the original work, CAPA experimental results were only 50 5G to reach the target of supporting services with extreme band-105 compared with a simple scheduling strategy for the tra- width and ultra-low latency requirements is by exploiting mul- ditional multipath MMT (ES). However, in this current tihoming capabilities. paper, besides ES, we also define a Path-Aware schedul- Multiple efforts have been made regarding multipath data ing strategy (PA) to compare with CAPA. PA considers transmission [18, 19], and different multipath protocols (e.g., only the paths’ condition for packet distribution. There- 110 55 MPTCP and CMT) have been proposed. However, most of the fore, result comparison with PA makes clear how much current transport protocols do not match the requirements of content-aware protection contributes to the overall perfor- video streaming applications or are not designed to address rel- mance gain. evant issues, such as delay constraints, network heterogeneity, • While we validated the proposed strategy with only two and head-of-line blocking issues. cartoon sequences in the original work, in this current pa- 60 At the crossroads, we observe MPEG Media Transport 115 per, it is validated with a more broad range of video se- (MMT) [20], as a popular multimedia protocol standardized quences including three cartoons and two natural scene in 2014 as a part of MPEG-H standard suite [21]. Several video sequences with motion, details and very tough col- other standards have already adopted MMT for major advances ors. This is due to this reason that content features of the in televisual technology worldwide [22, 23]. MMT supports streamed video sequence have a significant impact on the 65 UHD, on-demand, live video streaming, and it has also been 120 perceived video quality. Therefore, a proper scheduling widely used for VR, AR, and MVV technologies.