Abstract
The simple procedural segment selection algorithm commonly used in Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) reveals severe weakness to provide high-quality streaming services in the integrated mobile networks of various wired and wireless links. A major issue could be how to properly cope with dynamically changing underlying network conditions. The key to meet it should be to make the segment selection algorithm much more adaptive to fluctuation of network traffics. This paper presents a system architecture that replaces the existing procedural segment selection algorithm with a deep reinforcement learning algorithm based on the Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C). The distributed A3C-based deep learning server is designed and implemented to allow multiple clients in different network conditions to stream videos simultaneously, collect learning data quickly, and learn asynchronously, resulting in greatly improved learning speed as the number of video clients increases. The performance analysis shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms both the conventional DASH algorithm and the Deep Q-Network algorithm in terms of the user's quality of experience and the speed of deep learning.