Optimal frame rate allocation for unicast and multicast wireless video communication

In this paper we consider a paradigm for sum perceptual quality maximization in the context of unicast and multicast video transmission to heterogeneous multimedia wireless clients. The multimedia server is constrained by the processing overheads required for tasks such as video encoding, bit-stream extraction, packetisation etc. We demonstrate that the above problem of perceptual quality maximization is well represented by a constrained optimization framework. Further, this model can be readily extended to include QoS considerations in multicast transmission. Based on the system model, we present a closed form solution for frame rate allocation and a comprehensive algorithm for sum quality maximization. We compare the results obtained using the above mentioned frame rate allocation with the results obtained using a content agnostic equal frame rate allocation scheme and demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm in both unicast and multicast scenarios.