Analysis of HnH Model for Live Streaming Channels with a Small Number of Viewers

Current trends show an increasing number of Dedicated Channels having a Small number of Viewers (DCSV for short) in multi-channel live streaming systems. Usually, DCSV channels are either user generated or dedicated channels and they suffer adversely from poor channel performance, mainly, due to having a small number of participants. As a result, when a viewer explicitly requests for a block of streaming content, the probability that the requested block of data will be available among the existing viewers is less than what is required in order to offer a continuous service. We propose HnH (short for Hand in Hand), a novel scheme of cross-channel resource sharing, in order to solve the performance problem of DCSV channels due to their small number of viewers. We next develop a discrete-time stochastic model in order to analyze the performance issues of the proposed HnH scheme and provide insight into it. Numerical experiments were conducted in order to first validate the stochastic model, and then to evaluate the performance of the HnH scheme. Experiments showed that the HnH scheme allows an improvement of the quality of service for the viewers of DCSV channels.