Multicast and unicast real-time video streaming over wireless LANs

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology Vol. 12; no. 6; pp. 524 - 534
• Main Authors: Majumda, A., Sachs, D.G., Kozintsev, I.V., Ramchandran, K., Yeung, M.M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.06.2002; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Automatic repeat request; Coding, codes; Cost function; Error correction; Exact sciences and technology; Forward error correction; Image processing; Information, signal and communications theory; Multicast algorithms; Performance analysis; Signal and communications theory; Signal processing; Source coding; Streaming media; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Transmission and modulation (techniques and equipments); Unicast; Wireless LAN; Video coding; Multicast; Wireless telecommunication; Error correction; Multimedia communication; Real time; Channel coding; Automatic repeat request; Local network; Video signal processing; Digital transmission
• ISSN: 1051-8215; 1558-2205
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSVT.2002.800315

We address the problem of real-time video streaming over wireless LANs for both unicast and multicast transmission. The wireless channel is modeled as a packet-erasure channel at the IP level. For the unicast scenario, we describe a novel hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) algorithm that efficiently combines forward error control (FEC) coding with the ARQ protocol. For the multiple-users scenario, we formulate the problem of real-time video multicast as an optimization of a maximum regret cost function across the multicast user space. The proposed solution efficiently combines progressive source coding with FEC coding. We present a theoretical analysis of the unicast and multicast cases, as well as experimental results that demonstrate the performance advantages of the proposed algorithms over existing methods.