It is well-known that wide-area networks face today several performance and reliability problems. In this work, we propose to solve these problems by connecting two or more local-area networks together via a Redundant Array of Internet Links (or RAIL) and by proactively replicating each packet over these links. In that sense, RAIL is for networks what RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) was for disks. In this paper, we describe the RAIL approach, present our prototype (called the RAILedge), and evaluate its performance. First, we demonstrate that using multiple Internet links significantly improves the end-to-end performance in terms of network-level as well as application-level metrics for Voice-over-IP and TCP. Second, we show that a delay padding mechanism is needed to complement RAIL when there is significant delay disparity between the paths. Third, we show that two paths provide most of the benefit, if carefully managed. Finally, we discuss a RAIL-network architecture, where RAILedges make use of path redundancy, route control and application-specific mechanisms, to improve WAN performance.
In the media streaming community, the idea of path diversity is traditionally combined with multiple-description coding: complementary streams are simultaneously sent over independent paths, to achieve resilience to loss in a bandwidth-efficient manner. @cite_6 proposed to transmit multiple- description video over independent paths; in follow-up work @cite_36 , the same authors used this idea to design a content-delivery network. @cite_28 applied the same idea to Voice-over-IP and also designed an playout scheduling algorithm to handle multi-path transmission. The same authors did a simulation study on the effect of replication and path diversity on TCP transfers @cite_18 .
@cite_36 @cite_18 @cite_28 @cite_6
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Video communication over lossy packet networks such as the Internet is hampered by limited bandwidth and packet loss. This paper presents a system for providing reliable video communication over these networks, where the system is composed of two subsystems: (1) multiple state video encoder decoder and (2) a path diversity transmission system. Multiple state video coding combats the problem of error propagation at the decoder by coding the video into multiple independently decodable streams, each with its own prediction process and state. If one stream is lost the other streams can still be decoded to produce usable video, and furthermore, the correctly received streams provide bidirectional (previous and future) information that enables improved state recovery for the corrupted stream. This video coder is a form of multiple description coding (MDC), and its novelty lies in its use of information from the multiple streams to perform state recovery at the decoder. The path diversity transmission system explicitly sends different subsets of packets over different paths, as opposed to the default scenarios where the packets proceed along a single path, thereby enabling the end- to-end video application to effectively see an average path behavior. We refer to this as path diversity. Generally, seeing this average path behavior provides better performance than seeing the behavior of any individual random path. For example, the probability that all of the multiple paths are simultaneously congested is much less than the probability that a single path is congested. The resulting path diversity provides the multiple state video decoder with an appropriate virtual channel to assist in recovering from lost packets, and can also simplify system design, e.g. FEC design. We propose two architectures for achieving path diversity, and examine the effectiveness of path diversity in communicating video over a lossy packet network. In this paper, we present error-resilient Internet video transmission using path diversity and rate-distortion optimized reference picture selection. Under this scheme, the optimal packet dependency is determined adapting to network characteristics and video content, to achieve a better trade-off between coding efficiency and forming independent streams to increase error-resilience. The optimization is achieved within a rate-distortion framework, so that the expected end-to-end distortion is minimized under the given rate constraint. The expected distortion is calculated based on an accurate binary tree modeling with the effects of channel loss and error concealment taken into account. With the aid of active probing, packets are sent across multiple available paths according to a transmission policy which takes advantage of path diversity and seeks to minimize the loss rate. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides significant diversity gain, as well as gains over video redundancy coding and the NACK mode of conventional reference picture selection. Recent years have witnessed an explosive growth in multimedia streaming applications over the Internet. Notably, Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have emerged as two effective paradigms for delivering multimedia contents over the Internet. One salient feature shared between these two networks is the inherent support for path diversity streaming where a receiver receives multiple streams simultaneously on different network paths as a result of having multiple senders. In this paper, we propose a network coding framework for efficient video streaming in CDNs and P2P networks in which, multiple servers peers are employed to simultaneously stream a video to a single receiver. We show that network coding techniques can (a) eliminate the need for tight synchronization between the senders, (b) be integrated easily with TCP, and (c) reduce server's storage in CDN settings. Importantly, we propose the Hierarchical Network Coding (HNC) technique to be used with scalable video bit stream to combat bandwidth fluctuation on the Internet. Simulations demonstrate that under certain scenarios, our proposed network coding techniques can result in bandwidth saving up to 60 over the traditional schemes. We address the problem of prioritized video streaming over lossy overlay networks. We propose to exploit network path diversity via a novel randomized network coding (RNC) approach that provides unequal error protection (UEP) to the packets conveying the video content. We design a distributed receiver-driven streaming solution, where a client requests packets from the different priority classes from its neighbors in the overlay. Based on the received requests, a node in turn forwards combinations of the selected packets to the requesting peers. Choosing a network coding strategy at every node can be cast as an optimization problem that determines the rate allocation between the different packet classes such that the average distortion at the requesting peer is minimized. As the optimization problem has log-concavity properties, it can be solved with low complexity by an iterative algorithm. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme respects the relative priorities of the different packet classes and achieves a graceful quality adaptation to network resource constraints. Therefore, our scheme substantially outperforms reference schemes such as baseline network coding techniques as well as solutions that employ rateless codes with built-in UEP properties. The performance evaluation provides additional evidence of the substantial robustness of the proposed scheme in a variety of transmission scenarios. The use of forward error correction (FEC) coding is often proposed to combat the effects of network packet losses for error-resilient video transmission on packet-switched networks. On the other hand, path diversity has recently been proposed to improve network transport for both singledescription (SD) and multiple-description (MD) coded video. In this work we model and analyze an SD coded video transmission system employing packet-level FEC in combination with path diversity. In particular, we provide a precise analytical approach to evaluating the efficacy of path diversity in reducing the burstiness of network packet-loss processes. We use this approach to quantitatively demonstrate the advantages of path diversity in improving end-to-end video transport performance using packet-level FEC. We examine a network consisting of one source, one destination and two amplifying and forwarding relays and consider a scenario in which destination and relays can have various processing limitations. For all possible diversity combining schemes at the relays and at the destination, we find diversity order results analytically and confirm our findings through numerical calculations of bit error rate (BER) versus signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) curves. We compare our results with direct transmission, well known transmit diversity methods and traditional multihop transmission and conclude that diversity reception in multihop networks provides the lowest error rate. We propose a system that improves the performance of streaming media CDN by exploiting the path diversity provided by existing CDN infrastructure. Path diversity is provided by the different network paths that exist between a client and its nearby edge servers; and multiple description (MD) coding is coupled with this path diversity to provide resilience to losses. In our system, MD coding is used to code a media stream into multiple complementary descriptions, which are distributed across the edge servers in the CDN. When a client requests a media stream, it is directed to multiple nearby servers which host complementary descriptions. These servers simultaneously stream these complementary descriptions to the client over different network paths. This paper provides distortion models for MDC video and conventional video. We use these models to select the optimal pair of servers with complementary descriptions for each client while accounting for path lengths and path jointness and disjointness. We also use these models to evaluate the performance of MD streaming over CDN in a number of real and generated network topologies. Our results show that distortion reduction by about 20 to 40 can be realized even when the underlying CDN is not designed with MDC streaming in mind. Also, for certain topologies, MDC requires about 50 fewer CDN servers than conventional streaming techniques to achieve the same distortion at the clients. Cooperative diversity has been recently proposed as a way to form virtual antenna arrays that provide dramatic gains in slow fading wireless environments. However, most of the proposed solutions require distributed space-time coding algorithms, the careful design of which is left for future investigation if there is more than one cooperative relay. We propose a novel scheme that alleviates these problems and provides diversity gains on the order of the number of relays in the network. Our scheme first selects the best relay from a set of M available relays and then uses this "best" relay for cooperation between the source and the destination. We develop and analyze a distributed method to select the best relay that requires no topology information and is based on local measurements of the instantaneous channel conditions. This method also requires no explicit communication among the relays. The success (or failure) to select the best available path depends on the statistics of the wireless channel, and a methodology to evaluate performance for any kind of wireless channel statistics, is provided. Information theoretic analysis of outage probability shows that our scheme achieves the same diversity-multiplexing tradeoff as achieved by more complex protocols, where coordination and distributed space-time coding for M relay nodes is required, such as those proposed by Laneman and Wornell (2003). The simplicity of the technique allows for immediate implementation in existing radio hardware and its adoption could provide for improved flexibility, reliability, and efficiency in future 4G wireless systems. Recent advances in forward error correction and scalable video coding enable new approaches for robust, distributed streaming in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). This paper presents an approach for distribution of real time video by uncoordinated peer-to-peer relay or source nodes in an overlay network on top of a MANET. The approach proposed here allows for distributed, rate-distortion optimized transmission-rate allocation for competing scalable video streams at relay nodes in the overlay network. The approach has the desirable feature of path source diversity that can be used for enhancing reliability in connectivity to serving nodes and or attaining a higher throughput. The distributed approach reduces signaling overhead as well as avoiding scalability issues that come with centralized processing in MANETs. Results show a significant performance gain over both single-server systems and previously proposed multi-source systems. This paper investigates the impact of inter-user non-orthogonality and asynchronous communication on the information-outage probability performance of multi-user decode-and-forward (DF) cooperative diversity in a code-division multiple-access (CDMA) uplink. Each user in the proposed system transmits its own data towards the base station and also serves as a relay for other users. We assume full-duplex communication so that each user can transmit and receive simultaneously at the same frequency. Each user attempts to decode the messages of a plurality of other users and forwards the superposition of multiple re-encoded and re-spread messages. Our cooperative scheme employs a sub-optimum decorrelating receiver to suppress the multi-user interference at both the base station and the relay-side. We evaluate the information-outage probability performance of the proposed scheme in an underloaded, fully-loaded and overloaded CDMA uplink. We consider combining schemes at the base station where the source information is code combined with the relayed information, while the information from multiple relays is either code combined or diversity combined. Under the system parameters contemplated in this paper, diversity combining of the relayed information is nearly as good as code combining because of the associated probabilities of decoding at the relays. We then examine the effect of using practical modulation formats on the information-outage probability performance of the proposed DF multi-user sharing scheme under diversity combining. We see that the performance loss due to modulation constraints and the use of diversity combining instead of code combining is relatively small. We develop and analyze low-complexity cooperative diversity protocols that combat fading induced by multipath propagation in wireless networks. The underlying techniques exploit space diversity available through cooperating terminals' relaying signals for one another. We outline several strategies employed by the cooperating radios, including fixed relaying schemes such as amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward, selection relaying schemes that adapt based upon channel measurements between the cooperating terminals, and incremental relaying schemes that adapt based upon limited feedback from the destination terminal. We develop performance characterizations in terms of outage events and associated outage probabilities, which measure robustness of the transmissions to fading, focusing on the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. Except for fixed decode-and-forward, all of our cooperative diversity protocols are efficient in the sense that they achieve full diversity (i.e., second-order diversity in the case of two terminals), and, moreover, are close to optimum (within 1.5 dB) in certain regimes. Thus, using distributed antennas, we can provide the powerful benefits of space diversity without need for physical arrays, though at a loss of spectral efficiency due to half-duplex operation and possibly at the cost of additional receive hardware. Applicable to any wireless setting, including cellular or ad hoc networks-wherever space constraints preclude the use of physical arrays-the performance characterizations reveal that large power or energy savings result from the use of these protocols. This paper presents a framework for efficiently streaming scalable video from multiple servers over heterogeneous network paths. We propose to use rateless codes, or Fountain codes, such that each server acts as an independent source, without the need to coordinate its sending strategy with other servers. In this case, the problem of maximizing the received video quality and minimizing the bandwidth usage, is simply reduced to a rate allocation problem. We provide an optimal solution for an ideal scenario where the loss probvability on each server-client path is exactly known. We then present a heuristic-based algorithm, which implements an unequal error protection scheme for the more realistic case of imperfect knowledge of the loss probabilities. Simulation results finally demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, in distributed streaming scenarios over lossy channels. In this paper, a novel cognitive multiple-access strategy in the presence of a cooperating relay is proposed. Exploiting an important phenomenon in wireless networks, source burstiness, the cognitive relay utilizes the periods of silence of the terminals to enable cooperation. Therefore, no extra channel resources are allocated for cooperation and the system encounters no bandwidth losses. Two protocols are developed to implement the proposed multiple-access strategy. The maximum stable throughput region and the delay performance of the proposed protocols are characterized. The results reveal that the proposed protocols provide significant performance gains over conventional relaying strategies such as selection and incremental relaying, specially at high spectral efficiency regimes. The rationale is that the lossless bandwidth property of the proposed protocols results in a graceful degradation in the maximum stable throughput with increasing the required rate of communication. On the other hand, conventional relaying strategies suffer from catastrophic performance degradation because of their inherent bandwidth inefficiency that results from allocating specific channel resources for cooperation at the relay. The analysis reveals that the throughput region of the proposed strategy is a subset of its maximum stable throughput region, which is different from random access, where both regions are conjectured to be identical. In multiview video services, multiple cameras acquire the same scene from different perspectives, which results in correlated video streams. This generates large amounts of highly redundant data, which need to be properly handled during encoding and transmission of the multi-view data. In this work, we study coding and transmission strategies in multicamera sets, where correlated sources need to be sent to a central server through a bottleneck channel, and eventually delivered to interactive clients. We propose a dynamic correlation-aware packet scheduling optimization under delay, bandwidth, and interactivity constraints. A novel trellis-based solution permits to formally decompose the multivariate optimization problem, thereby significantly reducing the computation complexity. Simulation results show the gain of the proposed algorithm compared to baseline scheduling policies. Most of multipath multimedia streaming proposals use Forward Error Correction (FEC) approach to protect from packet losses. However, FEC does not sustain well burst of losses even when packets from a given FEC block are spread over multiple paths. In this article, we propose an online multipath convolutional coding for real-time multipath streaming based on an on-the-fly coding scheme called Tetrys. We evaluate the benefits brought out by this coding scheme inside an existing FEC multipath load splitting proposal known as Encoded Multipath Streaming (EMS). We demonstrate that Tetrys consistently outperforms FEC in both uniform and burst losses with EMS scheme. We also propose a modification of the standard EMS algorithm that greatly improves the performance in terms of packet recovery. Finally, we analyze different spreading policies of the Tetrys redundancy traffic between available paths and observe that the longer propagation delay path should be preferably used to carry repair packets. We investigate modulation schemes optimized for two-way wireless relaying systems, for which network coding is employed at the physical layer. We consider network coding based on denoise-and-forward (DNF) protocol, which consists of two stages: multiple access (MA) stage, where two terminals transmit simultaneously towards a relay, and broadcast (BC) stage, where the relay transmits towards the both terminals. We introduce a design principle of modulation and network coding, considering the superposed constellations during the MA stage. For the case of QPSK modulations at the MA stage, we show that QPSK constellations with an exclusive-or (XOR) network coding do not always offer the best transmission for the BC stage, and that there are several channel conditions in which unconventional 5-ary constellations lead to a better throughput performance. Through the use of sphere packing, we optimize the constellation for such an irregular network coding. We further discuss the design issue of the modulation in the case when the relay exploits diversity receptions such as multiple-antenna diversity and path diversity in frequency-selective fading. In addition, we apply our design strategy to a relaying system using higher-level modulations of 16QAM in the MA stage. Performance evaluations confirm that the proposed scheme can significantly improve end-to-end throughput for two-way relaying systems. We propose novel cooperative transmission protocols for delay-limited coherent fading channels consisting of N (half-duplex and single-antenna) partners and one cell site. In our work, we differentiate between the relay, cooperative broadcast (down-link), and cooperative multiple-access (CMA) (up-link) channels. The proposed protocols are evaluated using Zheng-Tse diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. For the relay channel, we investigate two classes of cooperation schemes; namely, amplify and forward (AF) protocols and decode and forward (DF) protocols. For the first class, we establish an upper bound on the achievable diversity-multiplexing tradeoff with a single relay. We then construct a new AF protocol that achieves this upper bound. The proposed algorithm is then extended to the general case with (N-1) relays where it is shown to outperform the space-time coded protocol of Laneman and Wornell without requiring decoding encoding at the relays. For the class of DF protocols, we develop a dynamic decode and forward (DDF) protocol that achieves the optimal tradeoff for multiplexing gains 0lesrles1 N. Furthermore, with a single relay, the DDF protocol is shown to dominate the class of AF protocols for all multiplexing gains. The superiority of the DDF protocol is shown to be more significant in the cooperative broadcast channel. The situation is reversed in the CMA channel where we propose a new AF protocol that achieves the optimal tradeoff for all multiplexing gains. A distinguishing feature of the proposed protocols in the three scenarios is that they do not rely on orthogonal subspaces, allowing for a more efficient use of resources. In fact, using our results one can argue that the suboptimality of previously proposed protocols stems from their use of orthogonal subspaces rather than the half-duplex constraint. This paper proposes a network coding approach to cooperative diversity featuring the algebraic superposition of channel codes over a finite field. The scenario under consideration is one in which two ldquopartnersrdquo - node A and node B - cooperate in transmitting information to a single destination; each partner transmits both locally generated information and relayed information that originated at the other partner. A key observation is that node B already knows node A's relayed information (because it originated at node B) and can exploit that knowledge when decoding node A's local information. This leads to an encoding scheme in which each partner transmits the algebraic superposition of its local and relayed information, and the superimposed codeword is interpreted differently at the two receivers i.e., at the other partner and at the destination node, based on their different a priori knowledge. Decoding at the destination is then carried out by iterating between the codewords from the two partners. It is shown via simulation that the proposed scheme provides substantial coding gain over other cooperative diversity techniques, including those based on time multiplexing and signal (Euclidean space) superposition. Cooperative diversity is a transmission technique, where multiple terminals pool their resources to form a virtual antenna array that realizes spatial diversity gain in a distributed fashion. In this paper, we examine the basic building block of cooperative diversity systems, a simple fading relay channel where the source, destination, and relay terminals are each equipped with single antenna transceivers. We consider three different time-division multiple-access-based cooperative protocols that vary the degree of broadcasting and receive collision. The relay terminal operates in either the amplify-and-forward (AF) or decode-and-forward (DF) modes. For each protocol, we study the ergodic and outage capacity behavior (assuming Gaussian code books) under the AF and DF modes of relaying. We analyze the spatial diversity performance of the various protocols and find that full spatial diversity (second-order in this case) is achieved by certain protocols provided that appropriate power control is employed. Our analysis unifies previous results reported in the literature and establishes the superiority (both from a capacity, as well as a diversity point-of-view) of a new protocol proposed in this paper. The second part of the paper is devoted to (distributed) space-time code design for fading relay channels operating in the AF mode. We show that the corresponding code design criteria consist of the traditional rank and determinant criteria for the case of colocated antennas, as well as appropriate power control rules. Consequently space-time codes designed for the case of colocated multiantenna channels can be used to realize cooperative diversity provided that appropriate power control is employed. A wireless network with fading and a single source-destination pair is considered. The information reaches the destination via multiple hops through a sequence of layers of single-antenna relays. At high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the simple amplify-and-forward strategy is shown to be optimal in terms of degrees of freedom, because it achieves the degrees of freedom equal to a point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. Hence, the lack of coordination in relay nodes does not reduce the achievable degrees of freedom. The performance of this amplify-and-forward strategy degrades with increasing network size. This phenomenon is analyzed by finding the tradeoffs between network size, rate, and diversity. A lower bound on the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff for concatenation of multiple random Gaussian matrices is obtained. Also, it is shown that achievable network size in the outage formulation (short codes) is a lot smaller than the ergodic formulation (long codes).