Performance Evaluation of Low-Latency Live Streaming of MPEG-DASH UHD video over Commercial 5G NSA/SA Network
Kasidis Arunruangsirilert, Bo Wei, Hang Song, Jiro Katto
TL;DR
This study addresses the challenge of delivering UHD live video with minimal buffering over commercial 5G networks. It implements a low-latency MPEG-DASH pipeline and compares performance across 5G SA, 5G NSA, and LTE in Thailand using real hardware and a real-time measurement setup, focusing on latency and dropped segments. The findings show that 5G SA consistently delivers UHD segments within the deadline (≈>95% success across scenarios), while 5G NSA exhibits mixed results depending on LTE signaling quality and can underperform relative to LTE in poor conditions; LTE generally performs poorly for low-latency UHD streaming (often >20–30% skipped segments). These results underscore the practical importance of 5G SA for reliable low-latency UHD streaming and motivate future work to improve NSA robustness and broaden field testing across deployments.
Abstract
5G Standalone (SA) is the goal of the 5G evolution, which aims to provide higher throughput and lower latency than the existing LTE network. One of the main applications of 5G is the real-time distribution of Ultra High-Definition (UHD) content with a resolution of 4K or 8K. In Q2/2021, Advanced Info Service (AIS), the biggest operator in Thailand, launched 5G SA, providing both 5G SA/NSA service nationwide in addition to the existing LTE network. While many parts of the world are still in process of rolling out the first phase of 5G in Non-Standalone (NSA) mode, 5G SA in Thailand already covers more than 76% of the population. In this paper, UHD video will be a real-time live streaming via MPEG-DASH over different mobile network technologies with minimal buffer size to provide the lowest latency. Then, performance such as the number of dropped segments, MAC throughput, and latency are evaluated in various situations such as stationary, moving in the urban area, moving at high speed, and also an ideal condition with maximum SINR. It has been found that 5G SA can deliver more than 95% of the UHD video segment successfully within the required time window in all situations, while 5G NSA produced mixed results depending on the condition of the LTE network. The result also reveals that the LTE network failed to deliver more than 20% of the video segment within the deadline, which shows that 5G SA is absolutely necessary for low-latency UHD video streaming and 5G NSA may not be good enough for such task as it relies on the legacy control signal.