The Upstream Matters: Impact of Uplink Performance on YouTube 360° Live Video Streaming in LTE

Live video streaming services are gaining momentum as network and terminal capabilities improve. However, 360° live video streaming services pose new challenges due to its high bandwidth and computational requirements both on the user and service provider. In this paper, a study of the impact of the uplink of a cellular network on the performance of 360° live video streaming in YouTube is presented. Unlike previous works, the analysis focuses on the upstream between the video source and the server, not on the downstream between the server and viewers. To this end, a measurement campaign is conducted where a live video feed is transmitted and received through YouTube 360° platform in a pilot Long Term Evolution (LTE) system. During the tests, a large dataset of real traces is collected at different protocol layers, both in upstream and downstream, to check the correlation between TCP/IP metrics and key service performance indicators (e.g., video segment quality and end-to-end latency). Results show that uplink performance has a strong impact on the latency perceived by the user, which is critical for the considered live services.