System and Method for Differentiated Services in Adaptive Streaming

• US 20110179186A1
• Filed: 01/20/2011
• Published: 07/21/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/20/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Futurewei Technologies Incorporated (Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Li, Sanqi, Wang, Ye-Kui, Chen, Yue, Yu, Hong Heather, Li, Hongbing
• Granted Patent: US 8,874,712 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/231
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/752 adapting media to network capabilities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/762 at the source reformatting of additional data in video distribution servers H04N21/2355
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/80 Responding to QoS

Abstract

A system and method for differentiated services in adaptive streaming are provided. A method for server operations includes: determining an optimization of aggregated quality of experience scores for a set of candidate subscribers served by a server; adjusting a service rate of at least one subscriber based on the determined optimization of aggregated quality of experience scores; and streaming information to the at least one subscriber based on the adjusted service rate. The optimization is based on one or more of: a subscriber level for one or more of the plurality of subscribers; a current service rate; and available service rates.

Claims

1. A method for server operations, the method comprising:

adjusting a service rate of at least one subscriber based on an optimization of aggregated quality of experience scores for a set of candidate subscribers served by a server, wherein the optimization is based on one or more of a subscriber level of the subscribers in the set of candidate subscribers, current service rate, and/or available service rates; and

streaming information to the at least one subscriber at the adjusted service rate.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein adjusting a service rate comprises adjusting the service rate so that lost quality of experience is minimized on subscribers with less impact on overall bandwidth utilization.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein adjusting the service rate so that lost quality of experience is minimized comprises:

computing a quality of experience for the subscribers in the set of candidate subscribers;

computing a contributing factor for the subscribers in the set of candidate subscribers, wherein a contributing factor for a subscriber is an impact of the subscriber'"'"'s service rate on overall bandwidth utilization; and

adjusting the service rate of the at least one subscriber while minimizing loss of quality of experience and minimizing impact on the overall bandwidth utilization.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein a quality of experience for a subscriber i is defined as

5. The method of claim 3, wherein a contributing factor for a subscriber i is defined as

6. The method of claim 3, wherein a service rate for a subscriber is adjusted to a possible service rate in a list of possible service rates.

7. The method of claim 3, wherein a service rate for a subscriber is adjusted to a possible service rate not in a list of possible service rates, and method further comprises transcoding content to the service rate.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein adjusting the service rate of the at least one subscriber comprises applying content based adaptation.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the server adjusts the service rate and wherein the server determines the optimization.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising selecting the server for a subscriber, wherein the server selected based on a server performance criteria, and wherein the subscriber is a high level subscriber.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the server performance comprises server bandwidth, a distance between the server and the subscriber, server load, connection traffic, connection bandwidth, connection latency, connection reliability, subscriber level, or a combination thereof.

12. A method for server operations, the method comprising:

determining a server load of a server that is streaming information to a plurality of subscribers;

adjusting a content characteristic for at least one subscriber of the plurality of subscribers if the server load meets a threshold, the adjusting based on an optimization of a quality of experience score for each subscriber of the plurality of subscribers, wherein the content characteristic is unchanged if the server load does not meet the threshold; and

streaming information to the plurality of subscribers, each subscriber having information streamed at a respective content characteristic.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein determining a server load comprises computing an aggregate load on the server.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising selecting a server for a subscriber based on a server performance criteria, wherein the server performance criteria comprises server bandwidth, a distance between the server and the subscriber, server load, connection traffic, connection bandwidth, connection latency, connection reliability, subscriber level, or a combination thereof, and wherein the subscriber is a high level subscriber.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein adjusting a content characteristic comprises adjusting the content characteristic to maximize the quality of experience score while minimizing an impact on overall bandwidth utilization for each subscriber.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein adjusting a content characteristic further comprises for a subset of subscribers, transcoding content to be served to the subscribers that are in the subset.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the subset of subscribers comprises highest level subscribers.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein adjusting a content characteristic further comprises for a subset of subscribers, applying content based adaptation to content to be served to the subscribers that are in the subset.

19. A communications device comprising:

a load computing unit configured to compute an aggregate bandwidth utilization of the communications device;

a content characteristic optimizing unit coupled to the load computing unit, the content characteristic optimizing unit configured to optimize at least one content characteristic of a set of candidate subscribers of the communications device if the aggregate bandwidth utilization meets a threshold, wherein the optimization is based on an optimization of a quality of experience score for each subscriber in the set of candidate subscribers;

a content characteristic adjusting unit coupled to the content characteristic optimizing unit, the content characteristic adjusting unit configured to adjust a content characteristic of media content being served to at least one subscriber in the set of candidate subscribers based on the optimization; and

a transmitter coupled to the content characteristic adjusting unit, the transmitter configured to stream information to the at least one subscriber based on the adjusted content characteristic.

20. The communications device of claim 19, wherein the content characteristic optimizing unit comprises:

a quality of experience compute unit configured to compute a quality of experience value for each subscriber in the set of candidate subscribers;

a contributing factor compute unit configured to compute an impact on overall bandwidth for each subscriber in the set of candidate subscribers; and

an optimize unit coupled to the quality of experience compute unit and to the contributing factor compute unit, the optimize unit configured to adjust the content characteristics of subscribers in the set of candidate subscribers based on their quality of experience values and impact on overall bandwidth values.

21. The communications device of claim 20, wherein the optimize unit is further configured to adjust the content characteristics of subscribers in the set of candidate subscribers based on a level of the subscriber.

22. The communications device of claim 19, wherein the content characteristic adjusting unit is further configured to adjust the media content being served to a subscriber to meet the adjusted content characteristic of the subscriber.

23. The communications device of claim 22, wherein the content characteristic adjusting unit is configured to transcode the media content or apply content based adaptation to the media content.

24. The communications device of claim 19, wherein the content characteristic comprises bit rate, frame rate, frame size, spatial resolution, interlacing, or a combination thereof.