QoE enhancement for video transmission over MANETs using distortion minimization

Quality of Experience (QoE) enhancement for a transmitted video sequence in Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) is a challenging and important issue in the networking research community. Intrinsic high levels of packet error probability in MANETs can cause high levels of distortion based on the position of packet loss in transmitted frames. Hence, exact modeling of the impact of packet loss on video quality and the resulting distortion is an important task. Many conventional distortion modeling techniques simply consider a linear relationship between the packet loss and distortion, which is inaccurate. The main contributions of the current work are twofold. At first, an accurate model has been developed, which can capture the exact effect of network packet loss on video quality performance (and hence on the QoE) with Group Of Picture (GOP)-level granularity. Then, based on this model, an optimal bandwidth allocation strategy is developed in MANETs, with which, based on some network-specific constraints, the loss-induced distortion associated with a video source is minimized, using some cross-layer design techniques. Finally, the resulting optimal rates can be used as rate-feedbacks for on-line rate adaptation of an appropriate video encoder, such as H.264/AVC. Numerical analysis verifies the theoretical results.