Dynamic Resource Allocation for Streaming Scalable Videos in SDN-Aided Dense Small-Cell Networks

Both wireless small-cell communications and software-defined networking (SDN) in wired systems continue to evolve rapidly, aiming for improving the quality of experience (QoE) of users. Against this emerging landscape, we conceive scalable video streaming over SDN-aided dense smell-cell networks by jointly optimizing the video layer selection, the wireless resource allocation, and the dynamic routing of video streams. In the light of this ambitious objective, we conceive a dense software-defined small-cell network architecture for the fine-grained manipulation of the video streams relying on the cooperation of small-cell base stations. Based on this framework, we formulate the scalable video streaming problem as maximizing the time-averaged QoE subject to a specific time-averaged rate constraint as well as to a resource constraint. By employing the classic Lyapunov optimization method, the problem is further decomposed into the twin sub-problems of video layer selection and wireless resource allocation. Via solving these sub-problems, we derive a video layer selection strategy and a wireless resource allocation algorithm. Furthermore, we propose a beneficial routing policy for scalable video streams with the aid of the so-called segment routing technique in the context of SDN, which additionally exploits the collaboration of small-cell base stations. Our results demonstrate compelling performance improvements compared with the classic PID control theory-based method.