Multicast scheduling for scalable video streaming in wireless networks

Abstract

We consider how relatively simple extensions of popular channel-aware schedulers can be used to multicast scalable video streams in high speed radio access networks. To support the evaluation, we first describe a model of the channel distortion of scalable video coding and validate it using eight commonly used test sequences. We use the distortion model in a detailed simulation setup to compare the performance of six schedulers, among them the Max-Sum and Max-Prod schedulers, which aim to maximize the sum and the product of streaming utilities, respectively. We investigate how the traffic load, user mobility, layering structure, and users' aversion of fluctuating distortion influence the streaming performance. Our results show that the Max-Sum scheduler performs better than other considered schemes in almost all scenarios. With the Max-Sum scheduler, the gain of scalable video coding compared to non-scalable coding is substantial, even when users do not tolerate frequent changes in video quality.