RD-Optimized Rate Shaping for Multiple Scalable Video Streams

Delivering streaming video over wired and wireless networks poses many challenges, primarily due to the throughput variations caused by time-varying network conditions. Scalable video coding gives an elegant way to adapt the video streams to the available transmission resource. In this paper, we consider a multi-user scenario wherein multiple scalable video streams compete for a shared transmission link with limited forwarding capacity. We propose a rate-distortion (RD) optimized rate shaping approach to improve the overall video quality. For this, compact RD side information is sent along with the sequences. Our simulation results show that significant improvements are achieved by the proposed RD-optimized rate shaping approach compared to conventional priority-based rate shaping.