Bandwidth provisioning for multiple description coding based video distribution

The paper presents a formal study on the optimal layer bandwidth allocation for non-cumulative layered video or multiple description coding based broadcasting over broadband wireless networks. We first formulate the optimal bandwidth allocation problem with the objective of maximizing goodput, the total bandwidth delivered to all the receivers in a session. We show that this problem, in its most general form, is computationally intractable. We then propose three practically effective heuristic algorithms for wireless broadcast environments, namely, merge-based allocation (MBA), multi-granular allocation (MGA), and cumulative layering based allocation (CLA). Numerical results show that all three heuristic algorithms significantly outperform non-adaptive allocation algorithms.