Dynamic and cooperative mobile video streaming across heterogeneous cellular networks

We propose a dynamic and cooperative approach to support the desired Quality of Experience (QoE) of the mobile users in a heterogeneous cellular network. Specifically, we focus on a scenario in which a mobile video streaming service is provided to users. We then develop a mobile streaming traffic microto-macro offloading scheme based on a cross layer approach, in which we exploit the knowledge of the video structure at a proxy side. Our results, obtained over a detailed case study, show that the proposed approach is able to enable high quality video streaming services that are otherwise not feasible. Moreover, even a moderate portion of the macro bandwidth (typically ranging between 15% and 25% of the total bandwidth) is already able to serve users that have been offloaded from the small cell. Finally, we show that, when the offloading is based on a cross-layer approach, the QoE experienced by users (e.g., in terms of delay) is higher than in the case in which the offloading decision is solely based on lower layer parameters like the channel quality.