Rate allocation optimized video streaming over heterogeneous emergency wireless mesh networks

Abstract

In emergency scenarios, e.g., natural disasters, the infrastructure of telecommunication system is partially or even completely disrupted. While the bandwidth and energy resources of system are limited, the multimedia communication demand of myriad users may reach the peak of data traffic. This in turn makes the system more challenging to serve the users high quality of multimedia streaming with conserved resources. In this paper, we address this challenge by proposing an efficiency rate allocation optimization scheme for video streaming applications (VSAs) over large-scale heterogeneous emergency wireless mesh networks (WMNs). In particular, on the one hand, WMNs provide easy implementation, quick recovery, broadband wireless applications, and low cost that can meet the significant requirements of emergency communication systems. On the other hand, we formulate a rate allocation optimization problem in the context that the whole system of VSAs over WMNs is categorized into different disaster areas characterized by diverse demand/behavior of user and condition/resource of networks. Solving this optimization problem, each video is thus adaptively encoded at different optimal rate corresponding to each area so as to maximize the quality of VSAs, while conserving the bandwidth and energy resources. Simulation resalts are shown to demonstrate the benefits of proposed optimization scheme.