Flexible layered multicasting method for multipoint video conference in heterogeneous access environment

Abstract

In multipoint real-time communication, one member needs to transmit information to all of the other members. However, there are some problems in real-time multicasting. Because the network resource of each member is different among multicast members in heterogeneous access environment, the maximum quality of the video stream, which each member can receive, is also different among them. Thus, we propose a new algorithm to fairly determine the rate of each layer according to network resources of each member in the shared-tree type application-level layered multicast. We aim to guarantee the maximal quality of service of each member's communication according to each network resource. In addition, it is confirmed that our proposed method is effective through the quantitative performance evaluation. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.