Machine Learning-Based Prediction of Quality Shifts on Video Streaming Over 5G

The Quality of Experience (QoE) is the users satisfaction while streaming a video session over an over-the-top (OTT) platform like YouTube. QoE of YouTube reflects the smooth streaming session without any buffering and quality shift events. One of the most important factors nowadays affecting QoE of YouTube is frequent shifts from higher to lower resolutions and vice versa. These shifts ensure a smooth streaming session; however, it might get a lower mean opinion score. For instance, dropping from 1080p to 480p during a video can preserve continuity but might reduce the viewers enjoyment. Over time, OTT platforms are looking for alternative ways to boost user experience instead of relying on traditional Quality of Service (QoS) metrics such as bandwidth, latency, and throughput. As a result, we look into the relationship between quality shifting in YouTube streaming sessions and the channel metrics RSRP, RSRQ, and SNR. Our findings state that these channel metrics positively correlate with shifts. Thus, in real-time, OTT can only rely on them to predict video streaming sessions into lower- and higher-resolution categories, thus providing more resources to improve user experience. Using traditional Machine Learning (ML) classifiers, we achieved an accuracy of 77-percent, while using only RSRP, RSRQ, and SNR. In the era of 5G and beyond, where ultra-reliable, low-latency networks promise enhanced streaming capabilities, the proposed methodology can be used to improve OTT services.