Time utility function based packet scheduling algorithm for streaming scalable media

In this paper, a packet scheduling algorithm that is based on a Time-Utility Function (TUF) is proposed. In the proposed system, the scalable media is partitioned into data units of different quality layers, which are then prioritized and transmitted according to their TUF´s that capture both their quality contributions to the decoded media and urgencies with respect to their playback schedule. For optimal streaming quality and meanwhile maintaining a reasonable computational complexity, the scheduling of packet transmission is obtained from a low-complexity packet scheduling algorithm based on utility accrual maximization. Experimental results show that the proposed scheduling algorithm achieves near optimal performance when compared to the operational rate distortion bound of the stream source at the capacity of the network.