Adaptive video streaming in heterogeneous mobile networks

With increasing deployment of 3G/4G technologies and growing computing power of modern smartphones, video multicast over mobile networks is becoming very popular. Due to mobility and interference, the channel quality fluctuates frequently over time, making it challenging to deliver live streaming services to mobile devices. In this paper, we propose an adaptive video streaming system that delivers layered video content to mobile devices over wireless channels of different and fluctuating qualities. To this end, the proposed system employs a novel design to prepare the redundant coded blocks required for forward error correction. This design makes the system flexible to dynamic changes in loss rates with minimum coding overhead. Specifically, the employed coding scheme is empowered by a novel fine granular coefficient matrix that decreases the delay and the computational complexity of coding operations. Furthermore the simulation results show that the new system offers a flexible streaming service, decreases the computational cost of preparing the FEC codes, significantly decreases the video transmission delay, and finally conserves energy on mobile devices.