Channel-Aware Frame Dropping for Cellular Video Streaming

In the case of cellular video streaming over wireless channels, burst frame losses may be unavoidable. Considering the unequal importance of different frames in a group-of-pictures (GOP) and the burst-error characteristics of wireless channels, this paper proposes a channel-aware frame dropping scheme so as to shift burst losses into relatively unimportant frames in the same GOP. By using selective retransmission at the radio link layer, a base station can adaptively assign the unequal transmission attempts to different video frames. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can be aware of the variation of wireless channel conditions, and thus significantly improve error resilience of cellular video streaming