A QoE friendly rate adaptation method for DASH

MPEG-DASH introduced open standards into HTTP streaming, which was a huge step forward. The scope of the MPEG-DASH standard was limited to the Media Presentation Description (MPD) format of the manifest files as well as the segmentation standards for the server, but did not include the client application as part of their standards. Particularly a good representation switching algorithm at DASH client should adapt to time varying bandwidth with better QoE (Quality of Experience). In this paper, we propose a QoE friendly rate adaptation method which can achieve less switching times and more gradual quality change. To achieve these purposes, we propose a fixed-interval buffer model, which keeps the representation level unchanged whenever the media buffer size is within the preset interval. We also design a step-wise switch-up method to prevent buffer overflow and a switch-down method based on intermediate quality level to prevent buffer underflow. A quick boot algorithm is introduced to fully improve the performance of the proposed scheme. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve more satisfactory results compared with existing ones.