Service-Less Video Multicast in 5G: Enablers and Challenges

Kamran Zahoor, Kashif Bilal, Aiman Erbad, Amr Mohamed

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The massive upsurge in production and demand of crowdsourced live streaming necessitates feasible and cost effective solutions in future cellular networks. Video multicast is one of the viable options to deliver live video using standardized multicast technologies, such as evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) architecture. However, eMBMS being a service-oriented architecture, it does not support crowdsourced live video streaming from popular providers like Twitch, YouTube Live, and Facebook Live, where millions of viewers watch live streams. This article explores the possibilities for the crowdsourced service-less video multicast in fifth generation (5G) Radio Access Network (RAN). We highlight major limitations in the standard eMBMS architecture and propose a viable solution using Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). The main challenges related to the initiation of an eMBMS service are presented, followed by our proposed network architecture, which augments the eMBMS architecture to initiate a service-less multicast video delivery for crowdsourced live videos. We evaluate and validate the proposed architecture using a real-world live video dataset. Our results depict the feasibility of the proposed architecture to multicast crowdsourced live streams and significant savings in cost and network consumption.

Original languageEnglish
Article number9105941
Pages (from-to)270-276
Number of pages7
JournalIEEE Network
Volume34
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2020
Externally publishedYes

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