Fair Robust Predictive Resource Allocation for Video Streaming under Rate Uncertainties

Abstract

Predictive Resource Allocation (PRA) has demonstrated its ability to provide smooth video delivery with minimal and fair interruptions. Recent work on PRA techniques exploited rate predictions to strategically allocate the limited radio resources for delivering video content. However, existing PRA techniques assume perfect prediction of future information in order to define the maximum attainable gains. In this paper, we introduce a probabilistic robust PRA framework that handles prediction errors. By adopting chance constraint programming we were able to define a probabilistic measure on the QoS degradation due to prediction uncertainties. A deterministic non-convex formulation is then obtained using the statistical parameters of predicted rates. Accordingly, we propose a convex approximation to the formulated fair PRA, which can be solved using optimal solvers to obtain a benchmark solution for future robust PRA schemes. We evaluate non-PRA and non-robust PRA schemes considering typical error models of the predicted rates. We found these schemes to result in suboptimal fairness and increased QoS degradations with the network load. Results further reveal the ability of the introduced robust fair PRA to reach the optimal and fair QoS satisfaction levels. Our approach provides a step towards applying PRA in future wireless networks to deliver video streaming content.