A decision feedback scheme for multimedia transmission over 3G mobile networks

UMTS, the successor of GSM, is evolving toward a future wireless all-IP network. In this paper we present how it supports real-time IP multimedia services, as these services are expected to drive the adoption of wireless all-IP networks. The scheme of real time streaming video is one of the newcomers in wireless data communication and in particular in UMTS, raising a number of novel requirements in both telecommunication and data communication systems. This scheme applies when the mobile user is experiencing real time multimedia content. In this paper, we describe the design and the implementation of a decision feedback scheme, which is based on real time protocols and it is used for streaming video over UMTS transport channels. The decision feedback scheme uses a friendly, to the mobile users, congestion control mechanism to control the transmission rate of the real time video sequence. Furthermore, we evaluate this mechanism through a number of experiments. During these experiments we demonstrate the friendly behavior of the decision feedback scheme to TCP and UDP data streams that coexist in the same channel with the video sequence.