Quality-of-Experience Optimization for a Cloud Gaming System With <italic>Ad Hoc</italic> Cloudlet Assistance

Abstract

Cloud gaming systems host the game in the cloud, while Gameplays and views are streamed to the players’ terminals in the form of encoded video frames. To address the high-bandwidth issue of real-time gaming video transmission, we have proposed a cloudlet-assisted multiplayer cloud gaming system to encourage cooperative video sharing, which exploits the similarities of video frames among multiple players in the same crowd playing the same game via a secondary ad hoc network. In this paper, we provide a detailed modeling of the proposed system, including the correlation between video frames, mobility of terminal devices, and diversity of network quality of service for distinct players. With necessary mathematical formulations, we study the players’ behaviors regarding the cooperative sharing patterns to optimize the system performance in terms of the quality of users’ experience. Also, heuristic algorithms are proposed to reduce the computational complexity. Empirical study and trace-driven simulation results illustrate the impact of mobility on the system performance and show that the proposed solution is able to provide better quality of experience compared with the existing platform.