US 11,736,552 B1
Sender based adaptive bit rate control
Rajesh Gunnalan, Sammamish, WA (US); Ilja Tsahhirov, Bellevue, WA (US); Mihhail Konovalov, Kirkland, WA (US); and Tin Qian, Redmond, WA (US)
Assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, Redmond, WA (US)
Filed on Sep. 21, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/949,869.
Int. Cl. H04L 65/80 (2022.01); H04L 65/752 (2022.01)
CPC H04L 65/752 (2022.05) [H04L 65/80 (2013.01)] 17 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computing device comprising:
a processor;
a network interface; and
memory;
the computing device configured to perform operations for low-latency streaming of media content, the operations comprising:
performing sender-based adaptive bit rate control operations for each of a plurality of streaming clients, comprising:
streaming a media stream with a first bit rate, comprising encoded video data, to a streaming client;
monitoring an outgoing queue of buffered streaming content to be sent to the streaming client;
when a step down condition associated with the outgoing queue of buffered streaming content is satisfied, based at least in part on the monitoring, switching to a lower bit rate media stream, relative to the first bit rate, for streaming to the streaming client; and
when a step up condition associated with the outgoing queue of buffered streaming content is satisfied, based at least in part on the monitoring, performing a step up operation that switches to a higher bit rate media stream, relative to the first bit rate, for streaming to the streaming client, wherein the step up condition is satisfied, at least in part, when fullness of the outgoing queue of buffered streaming content is below a threshold value and when a probing interval is reached, and wherein the probing interval is a variable length of time that increases when failed step up operations occur so that a longer period of time, in relation to a preceding step up operation, is used before performing a subsequent step up operation to increase bit rate again;
wherein the sender-based adaptive bit rate control operations are performed for the plurality of streaming clients without receiving any quality feedback from the plurality of streaming clients and without measuring bandwidth of network channels used for streaming to the plurality of streaming clients.