QoE evaluation for video streaming over eMBMS

As the multicast standard for Long Term Evolution (LTE), Enhanced Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) was introduced by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to facilitate delivery of popular content to multiple users over a cellular network. If a large number of users is interested in the same content, for e.g., live sports, news clips, etc., multicast transmission can significantly lower the cost and make better use of the spectrum as compared to unicast transmission. In this paper, we study and analyze the quality of experience (QoE) at the end user during live video streaming over eMBMS. We consider a comprehensive end-to-end MBMS streaming frame-work based on H.264/AVC encoded video content delivered in a chunked format over multiple segments using the File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport (FLUTE) protocol, combined with application layer (AL) forward error correction (FEC) based on Raptor and RaptorQ codes. Specifically, our study involves QoE evaluation in terms of startup delay, rebuffering percentage and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) metrics and provides performance evaluations to characterize the impact of various MBMS streaming, transport and AL-FEC configurations on the end user QoE. We also propose a decoding strategy that takes into consideration the systematic structure of AL-FEC codes to enhance performance when a source block decoding fails.