MobiStream: Error-Resilient Video Streaming in Wireless WANs Using Virtual Channels

—We present MobiStream— a video streaming system that exploits the perceptual value in video content and the characteristics of the link layer and physical layer channels to enable error-resilient video streaming over wireless wide-area networks (WWANs). The key building block in MobiStream is the use of link-layer based, but application-controlled, virtual channels (ViCs) abstraction. Each virtual channel offers a level of reliability and statistical loss gaurantees using ‘awareness’ of the characteristics of link-layer and physical layer channels. Video applications can dynamically instantiate new virtual channels, control their loss behavior, and/or flexibly switch video transmission across channels. MobiStream achieves fine-grained error-resilience by partitioning video frames into number of small, independently decodable, blocks of data (called ‘slices’) and assigns priority based on its perceptual (visual) usefulness. MobiStream augments a number of other enhancemen...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Rajiv Chakravorty, Suman Banerjee, Samrat Ganguly
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2006, Physical Layer Channels, Video Streaming, Virtual Channels