Comparative study of real-time multimedia transmission over multi-homing transport protocols

Abstract

The availability of multimedia applications suitable for deployment using 3G and GPRS networks has led to a requirement for end-to-end quality of service. More efficient mechanisms are needed in order to provide the required end user quality of service in wireless data networks. This paper investigates the performance implications of transmitting real-time multimedia content over a multi-homed transport protocol in a manner which is tolerant of network failure. It evaluates video quality with different retransmission policies combined with various path failure detection thresholds, path bandwidths, delays and loss rate conditions through Partial Reliable Stream Control Transmission Protocol (PR-SCTP). A solution called Evalvid-SCTP, which is a trace driven simulation of MPEG-4 video over SCTP, was designed to achieve the performance evaluation. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.