Abstract—We propose a robust scheme for streaming 360-
degree immersive videos to maximize the quality of experience
(QoE). Our streaming approach introduces a holistic analytical
framework built upon the formal method of stochastic optimization. We propose a robust algorithm which provides a
streaming rate such that the video quality degrades below that
rate with very low probability even in presence of uncertain
head movement, and bandwidth. It assumes the knowledge of the
viewing probability of different portions (tiles) of a panoramic
scene. Such probabilities can be easily derived from crowdsourced measurements performed by 360 video content providers.
We then propose efficient methods to solve the problem at
runtime while achieving a bounded optimality gap (in terms
of the QoE). We implemented our proposed approaches using
emulation. Using real users’ head movement traces and real cellular bandwidth traces, we show that our algorithms significantly
outperform the baseline algorithms by at least in 30% in the QoE
metric. Our algorithm gives a streaming rate which is 50% higher
compared to the baseline algorithms when the prediction error
is high.