Energy-Minimized Multipath Video Transport to Mobile Devices in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

• Published in: IEEE journal on selected areas in communications Vol. 34; no. 5; pp. 1160 - 1178
• Main Authors: Wu, Jiyan, Yuen, Chau, Cheng, Bo, Wang, Ming, Chen, Junliang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.05.2016; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Devices; energy efficiency; Frames; heterogeneous wireless networks; Mobile communication; Mobile communication systems; Mobile computing; Multipath transport protocol; Raptor codes; Real time; Real-time systems; real-time video; Scheduling; Streaming media; Transport; Transport protocols; Video transmission; Wireless networks; Multipath transport protocol; Raptor codes; heterogeneous wireless networks; real-time video; energy efficiency
• ISSN: 0733-8716; 1558-0008
• DOI: 10.1109/JSAC.2016.2551483

The technological evolutions in wireless communication systems prompt the bandwidth aggregation (e.g., Wi-Fi and LTE radio interfaces) for concurrent video transmission to hand-held devices. However, multipath video transport to the battery-limited mobile terminals is confronted with challenging technical problems: 1) high-quality real-time video streaming is throughput-demanding and delay-sensitive; 2) mobile device energy and video quality are not adequately considered in conventional multipath protocols; and 3) wireless networks are error-prone and bandwidth-limited. To enable the energy-efficient and quality-guaranteed live video streaming over heterogeneous wireless access networks, this paper proposes an energy-video aware multipath transport protocol (EVIS). First, we present a mathematical framework to analyze the frame-level energy-quality tradeoff for delay-constrained multihomed video communication over multiple communication paths. Second, we develop scheduling algorithms for prioritized frame scheduling and unequal loss protection to achieve target video quality with minimum device energy consumption. EVIS is able to effectively leverage video frame priority and rateless Raptor coding to jointly optimize energy efficiency and perceived quality. We conduct performance evaluation through extensive emulations in Exata involving real-time H.264 video streaming. Emulation results demonstrate that EVIS advances the state-of-the-art with remarkable improvements in energy conservation, video peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), end-to-end delay, and goodput.