A QoE-Aware Quality-Level Switching Algorithm for Adaptive Video Streaming

In this paper, we propose a quality of experience (QoE) aware quality-level switching algorithm for adaptive video streaming. The proposed algorithm is a quality- level switching algorithm which works on the controller of dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) system. The proposed algorithm has two features: insertion of intermediate quality level and limitation of quality-level switching. The proposed algorithm uses these two features adaptively for improving QoE based on network-throughput estimations. We implement the proposed algorithm on a real DASH system and evaluate QoE via subjective evaluations of users. As a result, we show that the proposed algorithm is effective to improve QoE when network throughput fluctuates. Note that the proposed algorithm realizes a high applicability to the existing web-based streaming because the proposed algorithm works on the client computer, and does not need any modifications on the server side.