A fair P2P scalable video streaming scheme using improved priority index assignment and multi-hierarchical topology

Abstract

A fair P2P scalable video streaming scheme is proposed in this paper. The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, to improve the quality fairness of multiple video streams, a modified Lloyd-Max quantization-based Priority Index (PID) assignment method for scalable video coding (SVC) is developed, where the base-layer quality is also embedded in the Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) message of the SVC bit stream, in addition to the quantized rate-distortion slope of each MGS packet. Secondly, to build a fair "contribute-and-reward" mechanism for P2P video streaming, we propose a multi-hierarchical topology that is based on peers' uploading bandwidth. Finally, we combine these two parts to build a SVC-based P2P network, which fully utilizes the quality scalability of SVC, and the end-user quality is determined by its uploading bandwidth contribution. The performance of the scheme is demonstrated by simulation results. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.