Abstract
This paper formulates an optimization problem thatmaximizes an aggregate utility that captures the “in-context” suit-ability of available radio access technologies (RATs) to supportadaptive video streaming subject to a single-homing constraint.To efficiently solve the considered problem, a novel network-assisted quality-of-experience (QoE)-driven methodology is de-vised, and its impact on the end-user devices is evaluated.The proposed approach is evaluated and benchmarked againstits distributed and centralized counterparts from a cost-benefitperspective. The results reveal that the proposed strategy sig-nificantly outperforms its distributed counterpart, and performsdifferently with respect to its centralized counterpart dependingon the number of video clients. At low loads, it performs similarlywith much less control overhead. At high loads, the proposedstrategy scales up well, while the centralized approach getsoverwhelmed by an increasing uplink signaling. A practicalityanalysis of the proposed strategy for battery-powered devicesreveals that its gain in terms of uplink signaling outweighs its costin terms of processing load, which results in a drastic reduction ofthe consumed energy. Therefore, the proposed solution providesa win-win situation, where the video clients can sustain goodQoE levels at reduced energy consumption, while the networkcan accommodate more users with existing capacity.