QoE-Aware Bandwidth Broker for HTTP Adaptive Streaming Flows in an SDN-Enabled HFC Network

Abstract

This paper proposes a software defined networking based bandwidth broker solution for improving viewer experience for any type of content delivered to any type of consumer device using HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) in a hybrid fiber coax network. This solution is designed to meet per-session and per-group quality-of-experience objectives, to avoid common HAS culprits such as video instability, unfair and unequal quality distribution and network resource underutilization, and to scale to a large number of concurrent HAS sessions without introducing too much overhead. The mathematical framework behind our solution solves a convex optimization problem, which relies on a concave network utility maximization function. Results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed solution over the state-of-the-art bitrate adaptation and bandwidth allocation schemes.