QoE Maximization for Aerial Video Streaming with Multiple Cellular Connected UAVs

In this paper, we consider an aerial video streaming scenario where multiple cellular connected UAVs are employed to capture videos from different Point of Interest (PoI) areas. The videos are transmitted to the base stations (BSs) such that ground users can share the visions of the UAVs. We aim to maximize the minimum quality of experience (QoE) of all users by optimizing transmission scheduling jointly with video playback rate and UAV trajectory design, where the uplink interference as well as the trade off between video quality and video smoothness are taken into account. The formulation problem is a mixed integer nonconvex optimization problem that is difficult to solve. We address it through an inexact block coordinate descent method with overlapped blocks of variables to improve optimization flexibly. To relax binary constraints, we adopt the exact penalty method with equilibrium constraints, where the exactness of the penalty function is guaranteed. In addition, successive convex approximation method is adopted to tackle the non-convexity of the optimization problem. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves significant performance improvement compared with the baseline schemes, and reveal the tradeoff between video quality and playback smoothness.