Bit-Rate Allocation, Scheduling, and Statistical Multiplexing for Wireless Video Streaming

Abstract: Due to the scarcity of wireless resources, efficient resource allocation is essential to the success of cellular systems. With the proliferation of bandwidth-hungry multimedia applications with diverse traffic characteristics and quality of service requirements, the resource management is becoming particularly challenging. In this thesis, we address some of the key link-layer resource allocation mechanisms that affect the performance of video streaming in cellular systems: bit-rate allocation, opportunistic scheduling, and statistical multiplexing. The bit-rate allocation problem involves the distortion-optimal assignment of source, channel, and pilot data rates under link capacity constraints. We derive an analytical model that captures the video distortion as a function of these data rates and, based on it, we study various bit-rate allocation strategies. The opportunistic scheduling problem addresses the throughput-optimal assignment of time-slots among users with diverse channel conditions under certain fairness constraints. We focus on two aspects of the opportunistic scheduling: the performance of delay-constrained streaming applications and possible extensions of the opportunistic concepts to multicast scenarios. Finally, the statistical multiplexing is a resource-efficient method for smoothing out the extreme burstiness of video streams. We study possible statistical multiplexing gains of H.264 video streams in the context of E-MBMS architecture.