Cross-layer content/channel aware multi-user scheduling for downlink wireless video streaming

A new cross-layer content/channel-aware downlink scheduling algorithm for wireless video streaming is presented. A novel mathematical model has been developed for the performance analysis of the proposed scheduling algorithm. Using novel content-aware and standard performance metrics, the performance of the scheduling algorithm is evaluated and optimized. The results show that there is an inherent conflict between content-awareness for enhanced video quality and channel-awareness for high channel capacity. The scheduling algorithm can be tuned to maximize the throughput of the most significant video packets, while minimizing the capacity penalty due to quality/capacity trade-off. The results also suggest that the level of content-awareness required for optimum performance at the scheduler and the achieved capacity, are highly sensitive to the delay constraint. The lower the delay constraint, the higher the importance of content-awareness and the lower the capacity. Under the parameters of the investigation in this paper, the results show that the capacity is 3.7 times more for a delay constraint of 10ms than for a zero delay constraint.