kbpsaa

kbpsaa is a theoretical metric used in digital communications to measure effective sustainable data rate experienced by a user when adaptive bitrate streaming is employed. It accounts for bitrate choices, overhead, buffering events, latency, and variability. It is designed to reflect user-perceived throughput rather than raw transport rate.

The acronym kbpsaa stands for "kilobits per second, adaptive aggregate average" (fictional). It emerged in academic discussions around streaming QoE in the mid-2010s. It is not a formal standard but appears in hypothetical examples and research papers as a measure of throughput fidelity.

Calculated over a user session window, T, to produce kbpsaa = sum_i ( bitrate_i * duration_i ) / T, where bitrate_i are chosen by the adaptive algorithm. It may include a penalty factor for buffering events, to better match user experience. Values typically range from tens to hundreds of kbps for low-quality streams up to several Mbps in high-definition.

Applications and usage: Primarily used in simulations and teaching materials to illustrate how adaptation decisions impact perceived throughput. Researchers compare streaming algorithms by their kbpsaa scores under varying network traces.

Related concepts: Related metrics include throughput, sustained bitrate, and QoE. Critiques note that kbpsaa depends on window size and environmental assumptions and should not be taken as a universal standard.