A packet prioritization scheme for 3D-HEVC content transmission over LTE networks

Long Term Evolution (LTE) has been standardized at the 3GPP since 2008 and targets the delivery of high data rate services with strict quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. It is now the fastest ever growing mobile technology and is gradually becoming the mainstream radio access technology used in cellular networks. The latest video coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), achieves higher compression rate than its predecessor Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and for the same level of quality uses almost 50% less bandwidth. HEVC is the leading video compression technology that will be used to deliver high-definition (HD) and ultra-high-definition (UHD) video content to users. Extensions of HEVC, such as 3D-HEVC, are now being developed and standardized by MPEG to deliver 3D video content. The current issues with LTE include its lack of awareness regarding the type of packets being transmitted, and their importance to the end user. The aim of this paper is to investigate the performance of 3D-HEVC over LTE networks using metrics such as packet loss ratio and average user throughput. We also propose a cross-layer solution in the form of a packet prioritization scheme to help provide better quality-of-experience (QoE) to users and demonstrate its advantages over a baseline scheme that is not QoE-aware.