Delivering Viewport-Adaptive 360-Degree Videos in Cache-Aided MEC Networks

Jiayi Liu, Gwendal Simon, Xavier Corbillon, Jacob Chakareski, Qinghai Yang

Abstract: The high bit-rate and low transmission latency requirements of 360-degree videos streaming impose many technical challenges. By introducing non-homogeneous spatial content quality, viewport adaptive streaming provides a bandwidth efficient solution for the delivery of 360-degree videos. Typically, two different implementations of viewport-adaptive streaming are considered: the projection-based and tile-based. Besides, cache-aided Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) network has been identified as a promising solution for supporting the streaming of 360-degree videos. In this paper, we design delivery mechanisms for the two types of viewport-adaptive streaming in the context of MEC. By considering the specific characteristics of projection-based and tile-based videos, we develop queue and multi-queues based streaming mechanisms for guaranteeing both transmission and queuing delays. Finally, our propositions are evaluated via realistic simulations that leverage a real data-set of user consumption of 360-degree videos.