Resource Allocation Frameworks for Network-coded Layered Multimedia Multicast Services

The explosive growth of content-on-the-move, such as video streaming to mobile devices, has propelled research on multimedia broadcast and multicast schemes. Multi-rate transmission strategies have been proposed as a means of delivering layered services to users experiencing different downlink channel conditions. In this paper, we consider Point-to-Multipoint layered service delivery across a generic cellular system and improve it by applying different random linear network coding approaches. We derive packet error probability expressions and use them as performance metrics in the formulation of resource allocation frameworks. The aim of these frameworks is both the optimization of the transmission scheme and the minimization of the number of broadcast packets on each downlink channel, while offering service guarantees to a predetermined fraction of users. As a case of study, our proposed frameworks are then adapted to the LTE-A standard and the eMBMS technology. We focus on the delivery of a video service based on the H.264/SVC standard and demonstrate the advantages of layered network coding over multi-rate transmission. Furthermore, we establish that the choice of both the network coding technique and resource allocation method play a critical role on the network footprint, and the quality of each received video layer.Comment: IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications - Special Issue on Fundamental Approaches to Network Coding in Wireless Communication Systems. To appea

Random Linear Network Coding for 5G Mobile Video Delivery

An exponential increase in mobile video delivery will continue with the demand for higher resolution, multi-view and large-scale multicast video services. Novel fifth generation (5G) 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard will bring a number of new opportunities for optimizing video delivery across both 5G core and radio access networks. One of the promising approaches for video quality adaptation, throughput enhancement and erasure protection is the use of packet-level random linear network coding (RLNC). In this review paper, we discuss the integration of RLNC into the 5G NR standard, building upon the ideas and opportunities identified in 4G LTE. We explicitly identify and discuss in detail novel 5G NR features that provide support for RLNC-based video delivery in 5G, thus pointing out to the promising avenues for future research.Comment: Invited paper for Special Issue "Network and Rateless Coding for Video Streaming" - MDPI Informatio

Instantly Decodable Network Coding for Real-Time Scalable Video Broadcast over Wireless Networks

In this paper, we study a real-time scalable video broadcast over wireless networks in instantly decodable network coded (IDNC) systems. Such real-time scalable video has a hard deadline and imposes a decoding order on the video layers.We first derive the upper bound on the probability that the individual completion times of all receivers meet the deadline. Using this probability, we design two prioritized IDNC algorithms, namely the expanding window IDNC (EW-IDNC) algorithm and the non-overlapping window IDNC (NOW-IDNC) algorithm. These algorithms provide a high level of protection to the most important video layer before considering additional video layers in coding decisions. Moreover, in these algorithms, we select an appropriate packet combination over a given number of video layers so that these video layers are decoded by the maximum number of receivers before the deadline. We formulate this packet selection problem as a two-stage maximal clique selection problem over an IDNC graph. Simulation results over a real scalable video stream show that our proposed EW-IDNC and NOW-IDNC algorithms improve the received video quality compared to the existing IDNC algorithms

EMB: Efficient Multimedia Broadcast in Multi-tier Mobile Networks

Multimedia broadcast and multicast services (MBMS) in mobile networks has been widely addressed, however an investigation of such a technology in emerging, multi-tier, scenarios is still lacking. Notably, user clustering and resource allocation are extremely challenging in multi-tier networks, and imperative to maximize system capacity and improve quality of user-experience (QoE) in MBMS. Thus, in this paper we propose a clustering and resource allocation approach, named EMB, which specifically addresses heterogeneous networks and accounts for the fact that multimedia content is adaptively encoded into scalable layers depending on the QoE requirements and channel conditions of the heterogeneous users. Importantly, we prove that our clustering algorithm yields Pareto efficient broadcasting areas, multimedia encoding parameters, and re- source allocation, in a way that is also fair to the users. Fur- thermore, numerical results obtained under realistic conditions and using real-world video content, show that the proposed EMB results in lower churn count (i.e., higher number of served users), higher throughput, and increased QoE, while using fewer network resources

Wireless Video Transmission with Over-the-Air Packet Mixing

In this paper, we propose a system for wireless video transmission with a wireless physical layer (PHY) that supports cooperative forwarding of interfered/superimposed packets. Our system model considers multiple and independent unicast transmissions between network nodes while a number of them serve as relays of the interfered/superimposed signals. For this new PHY the average transmission rate that each node can achieve is estimated first. Next, we formulate a utility optimization framework for the video transmission problem and we show that it can be simplified due to the features of the new PHY. Simulation results reveal the system operating regions for which superimposing wireless packets is a better choice than a typical cooperative PHY.Comment: 2012 Packet Video Worksho