Scalable and Media Aware Adaptive Video Streaming over Wireless Networks

Abstract

This paper proposes an advanced video streaming system based on scalable video coding in order to optimize resource utilization in wireless networks with retransmission mechanisms at radio protocol level. The key component of this system is a packet scheduling algorithm which operates on the different substreams of a main scalable video stream and which is implemented in a so-called media aware network element. The concerned type of transport channel is a dedicated channel subject to parameters (bitrate, loss rate) variations on the long run. Moreover, we propose a combined scalability approach in which common temporal and SNR scalability features can be used jointly with a partitioning of the image into regions of interest. Simulation results show that our approach provides substantial quality gain compared to classical packet transmission methods and they demonstrate how ROI coding combined with SNR scalability allows to improve again the visual quality.