Smoothing rate control for multiple video streams using game theory

To fairly allocate network bandwidth for different streams and to achieve a smooth quality between different video sequences are two key issues in multi-stream applications. In this paper, a new joint rate control scheme for multiple video streams based on game theory is proposed. We achieve a fair rate allocation in video quality between different sequences by Nash Bargaining theory under the constraints of buffer and bandwidth. Also, by grouping all the different sequences´ frames within the same timeslot into a coalition, we can avoid the fluctuation in a sequence by bargaining between current coalition and remaining coalitions. Some experiments have been conducted to verify the proposed method.