SDN-based throughput allocation in wireless networks for heterogeneous adaptive video streaming applications

Abstract

Adaptive video streaming providers take advantage of the HTTP protocol to deliver video contents to the applications of the end-users. Although, these applications use bitrate adaptation to adjust video resolution to network user conditions, this mechanism is used to improve fairness. Jain's algorithm has been employed to determine the increase of the Quality of Experience (QoE) of end-users. In wireless networks, performance is highly degraded when there is high number of concurrent users requesting adaptive video streaming. As a result, the QoE of some users is unpredictably degraded. In this paper, we propose an SDN-based TCP throughput management algorithm to provide fairness to competing users over a wireless network. It provides fairness among clients in order to avoid oscillation of the video quality and stable buffer length. Real measurements show an improvement of 39% of fairness among users for two competing clients, 43% for three competing clients and 46% for four.