Access-Network Association Policies for Media Streaming in Heterogeneous Environments

Abstract--We study the design of media streaming applications in the presence of multiple heterogeneous wireless access methods with different throughputs and costs. Our objective is to analytically characterize the trade-off between the usage cost and the Quality of user Experience (QoE), which is represented by the probability of interruption in media playback and the initial waiting time. We model each access network as a server that provides packets to the user according to a Poisson process with a certain rate and cost. Blocks are coded using random linear codes to alleviate the duplicate packet reception problem. Users must take decisions on how many packets to buffer before playout, and which networks to access during playout. We design, analyze and compare several control policies with a threshold structure. We formulate the problem of finding the optimal control policy as an MDP with a probabilistic constraint. We present the HJB equation for this problem by expanding the stat...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Ali ParandehGheibi, Muriel Médard, Asuman E. Ozdaglar, Srinivas Shakkottai
• Keywords: CORR 2010, Education, Heterogeneous Wireless Access, Initial Waiting Time, Packet Reception Problem