Title :
Distributed Rate Allocation Policies for Multihomed Video Streaming Over Heterogeneous Access Networks
Author :
Zhu, Xiaoqing ; Agrawal, Piyush ; Singh, Jatinder Pal ; Alpcan, Tansu ; Girod, Bernd
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA
fDate :
6/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
We consider the problem of rate allocation among multiple simultaneous video streams sharing multiple heterogeneous access networks. We develop and evaluate an analytical framework for optimal rate allocation based on observed available bit rate (ABR) and round-trip time (RTT) over each access network and video distortion-rate (DR) characteristics. The rate allocation is formulated as a convex optimization problem that minimizes the total expected distortion of all video streams. We present a distributed approximation of its solution and compare its performance against Hinfin-optimal control and two heuristic schemes based on TCP-style additive-increase-multiplicative-decrease (AIMD) principles. The various rate allocation schemes are evaluated in simulations of multiple high-definition (HD) video streams sharing multiple access networks. Our results demonstrate that, in comparison with heuristic AIMD-based schemes, both media-aware allocation and Hinfin-optimal control benefit from proactive congestion avoidance and reduce the average packet loss rate from 45% to below 2%. Improvement in average received video quality ranges between 1.5 to 10.7 dB in PSNR for various background traffic loads and video playout deadlines. Media-aware allocation further exploits its knowledge of the video DR characteristics to achieve a more balanced video quality among all streams.
Keywords :
Hinfin control; optimisation; subscriber loops; telecommunication control; video streaming; Hinfin-optimal control; TCP-style additive-increase-multiplicative-decrease principle; available bit rate; convex optimization problem; distributed approximation; distributed rate allocation policies; media-aware allocation; multihomed video streaming; multiple heterogeneous access networks; multiple simultaneous video streams; optimal rate allocation; round-trip time; video distortion-rate; video quality; Distributed rate allocation; heterogeneous access networks; multihomed video streaming;
Journal_Title :
Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TMM.2009.2017641