Smooth Fast Broadcasting (SFB) for Compressed Videos

1999

Broadcasting protocols can improve the efficiency of video on demand services by reducing the bandwidth required to transmit videos that are simultaneously watched by many viewers. We present here two broadcasting protocols that achieve nearly the same low bandwidth as the best extant broadcasting protocol while guaranteeing a lower maximum access time. Our first protocol, cautious harmonic broadcasting, requires somewhat more bandwidth than our second protocol, quasi-harmonic broadcasting, but is also much simpler to implement.

Journal of Signal Processing Systems, 2010

Recent years have witnessed an explosive growth in multimedia streaming applications over the Internet. Notably, Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have emerged as two effective paradigms for delivering multimedia contents over the Internet. One salient feature shared between these two networks is the inherent support for path diversity streaming where a receiver receives multiple streams simultaneously on different network paths as a result of having multiple senders. In this paper, we propose a network coding framework for efficient video streaming in CDNs and P2P networks in which, multiple servers/peers are employed to simultaneously stream a video to a single receiver. We show that network coding techniques can (a) eliminate the need for tight synchronization between the senders, (b) be integrated easily with TCP, and (c) reduce server's storage in CDN settings. Importantly, we propose the Hierarchical Network Coding (HNC) technique to be used with scalable video bit stream to combat bandwidth fluctuation on the Internet. Simulations demonstrate that under certain scenarios, our proposed network coding techniques can result in bandwidth saving up to 60% over the traditional schemes.

Proceedings of the seventh ACM …, 2001

Broadcasting protocols for video-on-demand continuously retransmit videos that are watched simultaneously by many viewers. Nearly all broadcasting protocols assume that the client set-top box has enough storage to store between 48 and 60 minutes of video. We propose to use this storage to anticipate the customer requests and to preload, say, the first 3 minutes of the top 16 to 20 videos. This would provide instantaneous access to these videos and also eliminate the extra bandwidth required to handle compressed video signal.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

As the progress of wireless communication technology and portable computing devices such as PDAs and cellular phones in recent years, users are requiring more advanced services through those terminals. One promising service is watching multiple video contents simultaneously with the specified layouts. In this paper, we propose a method to realize such an advanced video delivery service. When many users want to receive and play back different sets of videos with various combinations and layouts, it would be difficult to satisfy all users' requirements due restrictions on network resources and each terminal's computational resources. In the proposed method, we introduce proxies which receive multiple video contents from corresponding servers and produce a composite video from the received contents in real-time according to the layouts which users specify. However, if users require sets of video contents with slightly different layouts, multiple similar composite videos will be generated and the network bandwidth will be suppressed to transfer them. So, the proposed video delivery method identifies the common part of user requirements, and transmits to each user a composite video corresponding to the common part and remaining videos so that each user receives and plays back as small number of videos as possible. We have developed a greedy algorithm which calculates the set of videos (both composite and original) to be transmitted within the available wireless network bandwidth, so that the sum of satisfaction degrees of all users is maximized. Through experiments, we confirmed that our proposed method can achieve much higher user satisfaction degrees compared to the case that each user terminal receives multiple videos separately and plays them back in parallel.

We present a simple fixed-delay broadcasting (SFDB) protocol for video-on-demand. Our protocol assumes that each video to be broadcast will be partitioned into segments of equal duration to be transmitted over a fixed number of video channels. In addition, it requires all customers to wait for the same fixed delay before watching the video they have selected. Our protocol uses timedivision multiplexing to obtain the best transmission schedule for the channel that broadcasts the first segments of the video. The same multiplexing scheme is then reproduced on all the remaining channels. Despite its simplicity, our simple fixed delay broadcasting protocol achieves waiting times comparable to those of much more sophisticated broadcasting protocols. We also show how the protocol can be modified to handle set-top boxes that cannot receive data at more than two or three times the video consumption rate.

… , IEEE Transactions on, 2004

We consider streaming of video sequences over both constant and variable bit-rate (VBR) channels. Our goal is to enable decoding of each video unit before exceeding its displaying deadline and, hence, to guarantee successful sequence presentation even if the media rate does not match the channel rate. In this work, we will show that the separation between a delay jitter buffer and a decoder buffer is in general suboptimal for VBR video transmitted over VBR channels. We will specify the minimum initial delay and the minimum required buffer for a given video stream and a deterministic VBR channel. In addition, we provide some probabilistic statements in case that we observe a random behavior of the channel bit rate. A specific example tailored to wireless video streaming is discussed in greater details and bounds are derived which allow guaranteeing a certain quality-of-service even for random VBR channels in a wireless environment. Simulation results validate the findings.

Video streaming over wireless networks has undergone enormous development recently due to the continuing growth in wireless communication, especially since the emergence of 3G wireless networks. The new generations of wireless networks pose many challenges, including supporting quality of service over wireless communication links. This is due to the time-varying characteristics of wireless channel. Therefore, a more flexible and efficient bandwidth allocation scheme is needed. This paper is a part of ongoing work to come up with a more robust scheme that is capable of rapidly adapting to changes in network conditions. The proposed scheme focuses on the wireless part of the network, providing high quality video service and better network resource utilization.

Computer Communications, 2001

In this paper, we analyse the statistical data sets of several MPEG encoded videos and propose a model of the elements of a scene. We also propose and evaluate a novel dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme for MPEG video sources suitable for wireless networks. The proposed model permits the characterisation of the elements of the stream scenes. The proposed scheme is dynamic and pro-active. It automatically adjusts the amount of reserved resources, while guarantying the required QoS. It exploits the structure of the MPEG video stream and allocates bandwidth on a scene basis. The presented dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithm is evaluated using simulation and actual MPEG video data. The performance evaluations showed a major improvement in bandwidth utilisation as compared to other proposed schemes.

2003

We consider streaming of video sequences over both, constant and variable bitrate channels. Our goal is to enable decoding of each video unit before exceeding its displaying deadline and, hence, to guarantee successful sequence presentation even if the media rate does not match the channel rate. In this work, we will show that the separation between a delay jitter buffer and a decoder buffer is in general sub-optimal for VBR video transmitted over VBR channel. We will define the minimum initial delay and the minimum required buffer for a given video-stream and a deterministic VBR channel. In addition, we provide some probabilistic statements in the case that we have a random behaviour of the channel bit-rate. A specific example tailored to wireless video streaming are discussed in greater details and bounds are derived which allow to guarantee a certain quality-of-service even for random VBR channels in a wireless environment. A specific example validates the findings.