Dynamic Resource Allocation for Robust Distributed Multi-Point Video Conferencing

This paper proposes a distributed multi-point video conferencing system over packet erasure channels, where the aggregation of multiple video streams and resource allocation are performed in a distributed manner. Video stream combiners, which are located in different geographical areas and serve as portals for conferees, aggregate incoming streams supplied by local users with other streams aggregated from nearby video stream combiners. A packet-division multiple-access (PDMA)-based error protection scheme is proposed to be performed at each video stream combiner to minimize the maximal expected video distortion among aggregated streams. The proposed error protection scheme for multi-stream aggregation also supports user preference. In order to deliver video streams to end users with different preferred quality, a consensus algorithm is proposed to adaptively perform resource allocation based on user preference. Simulation results show that the proposed multi-stream aggregation and error protection scheme has significant gains over traditional multi-stream error protection schemes for a multi-point video conferencing system.