A Comprehensive Survey of Adaptive Streaming Over HTTP (DASH) in 5G Networks: Performance Enhancements and Emerging Challenges

Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) has emerged as a foundational technology for video delivery over heterogeneous networks, particularly within 5G environments characterized by high bandwidth variability, ultralow‐latency requirements, and dense mobility patterns. This survey provides a comprehensive analysis of DASH from a system‐level perspective, emphasizing the interaction between adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms, transport‐layer evolution, edge computing paradigms, and radio access dynamics. The study synthesizes existing literature across four primary dimensions: performance optimization, latency reduction, energy efficiency, and security resilience. It highlights how traditional ABR strategies—throughput‐based, buffer‐based, hybrid, and machine learning‐driven approaches—exhibit distinct tradeoffs in quality of experience (QoE), stability, computational overhead, and power consumption. Furthermore, the evolution of HTTP protocols (HTTP/2 and HTTP/3) and the integration of multiaccess edge computing (MEC), content delivery network (CDN) caching, and device‐to‐device communication are shown to significantly influence streaming efficiency, albeit with new architectural complexities. A key contribution of this work is the explicit framing of DASH in 5G as a cross‐layer optimization problem, where QoE, energy efficiency, and security are tightly coupled rather than independently optimizable. The survey also examines emerging security vulnerabilities across media presentation description (MPD) manipulation, segment injection, and CDN poisoning, emphasizing that DASH’s HTTP‐based design inherently expands the attack surface in distributed deployments. Finally, the paper identifies persistent gaps in current research, including the dominance of simulation‐based evaluations, limited real‐world validation, lack of unified cross‐layer frameworks, and insufficient integration of security‐aware and energy‐aware adaptation mechanisms. The findings suggest that future DASH systems must evolve toward coordinated, intelligence‐driven architectures that jointly optimize performance, robustness, and resource efficiency in dynamic 5G and beyond networks.