Defeating heterogeneity in wireless multicast networks

The growing demand for real-time streaming video on portable devices has increased the importance of multimedia multicast in mobile wireless networks. A defining characteristic of such multicast networks is its heterogeneity in both the channel states and the MIMO capabilities of its clients. However, current wireless multicast schemes adapt poorly to such heterogeneity. We introduce Procrustes, a multimedia multicast scheme that is built upon a novel PHY-layer rateless code. Unlike bit-level rateless codes (such as Raptor [14] codes), Procrustes clients automatically adjust the PSNR of the received multicast video stream to match both the instantaneous channel state and the number of active receive antennas. We demonstrate the performance of Procrustes in a simulated environment.