Video delivery over heterogeneous cellular networks: Optimizing cost and performance

Abstract

Video delivery to mobile users is one of the largest challenges that network operators face today. In this work we consider a heterogeneous cellular network with storage capable small-cell base stations, and study this problem for pre-stored video files that can be encoded with two different schemes, namely versions or layers, in various qualities. We introduce a framework for the joint derivation of video caching and routing policies for users with different quality requirements. This allows the operator to optimize a balanced objective of incurred servicing cost, and users experienced delay, according to his priorities. The numerical results indicate that versions and layers may have different impact on the delay and servicing cost, depending on the diversity of users' demand, and that the cost-delay trade off is affected by the network's load. © 2014 IEEE.