Stochastic TCO minimization for Video Transmission over IP Networks

Abstract: From the viewpoint of service operators the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for developing a communication service comprises from two parts; CAPital EXpenditure (CAPEX) and OPerational EXpenditure (OPEX). These two types of costs are interrelated and affect any service provider's deployment strategy. In many traditional methods, selection of critical elements of a new service is performed in a heuristic manner aimed at reducing only the OPEX part of the TCO which is not necessarily optimal. Furthermore, exact cost modeling for such services is not always possible and contains some uncertainties. In the current work, after cost modeling of each video streaming element by capturing the effect of the model uncertainties, the TCO optimization problem for video streaming over IP networks is formulated as a stochastic optimization problem. The solution of the proposed optimization problem can cope with the cost modeling uncertainties and track the dynamism in the TCO and lead to a time-varying optimal solution. Numerical analysis results verify the developed method.