DIA: A Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Interest-Aware ABR Scheme for Cloud Gaming

Abstract

The continuous evolution of cloud gaming has enabled users to play high-quality cloud games on thin clients, such as smartphones and tablets. However, how to effectively transmit the gameplay frames with high resolution and low latency, especially over wireless networks, remains a significant challenge. To address this challenge, we propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL)-based Interest-Aware Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) scheme, called DIA, that guarantees the quality of perceptually key objects in each frame, while dynamically allocating lower resolutions for non-key objects to conserve bandwidth under constrained network conditions. By leveraging an off-the-shelf semantic segmentation model, the proposed DIA scheme can adjust the bitrate at the object-level. We also design a transformer-based feature extractor and an interest-aware reward function to enable the proposed DIA scheme to identify key objects and dynamically adjust their bitrates. This adaptation is guided by users' in-game movement speed, object features, and prevailing network conditions and operates without requiring additional hardware, such as gaze trackers. Extensive experiments show that the proposed DIA scheme outperforms existing ABR schemes in dynamic wireless network environments. Notably, DIA achieves at least a 20% higher normalized average Quality of Experience (QoE) than the State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) ABR algorithms in 5G scenarios.