WLC40-6: Playback Adaptation with Transport-Protocol Awareness for Wireless Video Streaming

This paper introduces a new idea for implementing playback adaptation algorithms suitable for video streaming applications in wireless IP networks. The proposed algorithm depends on the accurate estimation of the expected latency of lost video packets. The latency is estimated according to the transport protocol being used, which in our case is TCP. The client uses this estimate in order to adjust the playback rate according to a new algorithm so that both buffer underflows and overflows can be avoided. The proposed algorithm in non-intrusive to the protocol stack since it does not require any modifications to the transport protocol. To validate the basic principles behind our idea, we provide a set of comparative experimental results with other streaming systems in terms of the rate of underflow events and the actual PSNR.