Popularity-Aware 360-Degree Video Streaming

Tile-based streaming techniques have been widely used to save bandwidth in 360° video streaming. However, it is a challenge to determine the right tile size which directly affects the bandwidth usage. To address this problem, we propose to encode the video by considering the viewing popularity, where the popularly viewed areas are encoded as macrotiles to save bandwidth. We propose techniques to identify and build macrotiles, and adjust their sizes considering practical issues such as head movement randomness. In some cases, a user's viewing area may not be covered by the constructed macrotiles, and then the conventional tiling scheme is used. To support popularity-aware 360° video streaming, the client selects the right tiles (a macrotile or a set of conventional tiles) with the right quality level to maximize the QoE under bandwidth constraint. We formulate this problem as an optimization problem which is NP-hard, and then propose a heuristic algorithm to solve it. Through extensive evaluations based on real traces, we demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the QoE and save the bandwidth usage.

I. Introduction

360° video is becoming more and more popular on video platforms such as YouTube and Facebook [1], [2]. As 360° video is much larger than conventional video under the same perceived quality [3], [4], [5], streaming 360° video is much more challenging, especially over wireless (e.g., cellular) networks with limited bandwidth.