Adaptive scheduling of streaming video over wireless networks

Abstract

We consider the packet scheduling of video frames in the wireless last hop. At the time of network congestion and bad channel conditions, it is necessary to drop some (less important) frames in order to maintain the continuity of the video streaming. The decision on whether to drop and how many frames need to be dropped has to be based on the deadline, size, and importance/utility (in terms of the contribution to the video quality) of each frame. In this paper, we propose an adaptive scheduling algorithm that dynamically decides which frames need to be transmitted and which ones need to be dropped at any transmission opportunity based on the current channel conditions and on the characteristics of each video frame. Simulation results show our scheduling algorithm achieves near optimal performance compared to an optimal offline algorithm that knows the outcome of each transmission opportunity in the future. © 2008 IEEE.