A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> In this paper, we propose a novel transport protocol that effectively utilizes available bandwidth and diversity gains provided by heterogeneous, highly lossy paths. Our Multi-Path LOss-Tolerant (MPLOT) protocol can be used to provide significant gains in the goodput of wireless mesh networks, subject to bursty, correlated losses with average loss-rates as high as 50%, and random outage events. MPLOT makes intelligent use of erasure codes to guard against packets losses, and a Hybrid-ARQ/FEC scheme to reduce packet recovery latency, where the redundancy is adaptively provisioned into both proactive and reactive FECs. MPLOT uses dynamic packet mapping based on current path characteristics, and does not require packets to be delivered in sequence to ensure reliability. We present a theoretical analysis of the different design choices of MPLOT and show that MPLOT makes an optimal trade-off between goodput and delay constraints. We test MPLOT, through simulations, under a variety of test scenarios and show that it effectively exploits path diversity in addition to aggregating path bandwidths. We also show that MPLOT is fair to single-path protocols like TCP-SACK. <s> BIB001 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> The increasing number of interfaces using different access technologies in modern devices gives opportunities for enhancing the Quality of Service (QoS) delivered to multimedia and interactive data transfers involved in distributed applications. In the current Internet, the presence of "middleboxes" such as Network Address Translators (NAT) or firewalls hardly lets applications use any Transport protocol but the well-known Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Currently under standardization at the IETF, the new Multipath-TCP (MPTCP) protocol uses several TCP flows to make use of the multiple interfaces available on the end terminals, thus improving both network availability and QoS, still being capable to cross over middle boxes. Although originally being fully reliable and fully ordered, its two sub-layers architecture gives opportunity to use QoS techniques over fully reliable paths. This paper studies the QoS benefits induced by the implementation of the "partial reliability" concept in MPTCP for interactive video applications. Two different mechanisms are experimented with the aim to enhance global quality of video transmission over paths close to 3G networks characteristics. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) MPTCP working group's ns-2 implementation is used for the experimentations. The Evalvid toolkit over ns-2 is used to measure the QoS benefits expressed in terms of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). <s> BIB002 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> The Internet infrastructure often supports multiple routes between two communicating hosts and, today, especially mobile hosts usually offer multiple network interfaces, so that disjoint paths between the hosts can be constructed. Having a number of (partly or fully) disjoint paths available may allow applications to distribute their traffic, aggregate capacity of different paths, choose the most suitable subset of paths, and support failover if a path fails. Exploiting multipath characteristics has been explored for TCP, but the requirements for real-time traffic differs notably. In this paper, we devise a multipath communication model for Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP); present minimal set of required protocol extensions; develop algorithms for scheduling RTP traffic across multiple paths at the sender and a corresponding de-jittering algorithm at the receiver side; and evaluate our proposal in varying scenarios using media traffic across different emulated mobile access network setups. <s> BIB003 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> We consider the problem of scalable video streaming from a server to multinetwork clients over heterogeneous access networks, with the goal of minimizing the distortion of the received videos. This problem has numerous applications including: 1) mobile devices connecting to multiple licensed and ISM bands, and 2) cognitive multiradio devices employing spectrum bonding. In this paper, we ascertain how to optimally determine which video packets to transmit over each access network. We present models to capture the network conditions and video characteristics and develop an integer program for deterministic packet scheduling. Solving the integer program exactly is typically not computationally tractable, so we develop heuristic algorithms for deterministic packet scheduling, as well as convex optimization problems for randomized packet scheduling. We carry out a thorough study of the tradeoff between performance and computational complexity and propose a convex programming-based algorithm that yields good performance while being suitable for real-time applications. We conduct extensive trace-driven simulations to evaluate the proposed algorithms using real network conditions and scalable video streams. The simulation results show that the proposed convex programming-based algorithm: 1) outperforms the rate control algorithms defined in the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) by about 10-15 dB higher video quality; 2) reduces average delivery delay by over 90% compared to DCCP; 3) results in higher average video quality of 4.47 and 1.92 dB than the two developed heuristics; 4) runs efficiently, up to six times faster than the best-performing heuristic; and 5) does indeed provide service differentiation among users. <s> BIB004 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> The growing availability of various wireless access technologies promotes increasing demand for mobile video applications. Stream control transmission protocol (SCTP)-based concurrent multipath transfer (CMT) improves the wireless video delivery performance with its parallel transmission and bandwidth (BW) aggregation features. However, the existing CMT solutions deployed at the transport layer only are not accurate enough due to lower layer uncertainties, such as variations of the wireless channel. In addition, CMT-based video transmission may use excessive BW in comparison with the popular Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)-based flows, which results in unfair sharing of network resources. This paper proposes a novel cross-layer fairness-driven (CL/FD) SCTP-based CMT solution (CMT-CL/FD) to improve video delivery performance, while remaining fair to the competing TCP flows. CMT-CL/FD utilizes a cross-layer approach to monitor and analyze path quality, which includes wireless channel measurements at the data-link layer and rate/BW estimations at the transport layer. Furthermore, an innovative window-based mechanism is applied for flow control to balance delivery fairness and efficiency. Finally, CMT-CL/FD intelligently distributes video data over different paths depending on their estimated quality to mitigate packet reordering and loss, under the constraint of TCP-friendly flow control. Simulation results show how CMT-CL/FD outperforms existing solutions in terms of both video delivery performance and TCP-friendliness. <s> BIB005 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> Recent technological advancements in wireless infrastructures and handheld devices enable mobile users to concurrently receive multimedia contents with different radio interfaces (e.g., cellular and Wi-Fi). However, multipath video transport over the resource-limited and error-prone wireless networks is challenged with key technical issues: 1) conventional multipath protocols are throughput-oriented, and video data are scheduled in a content-agnostic fashion and 2) high-quality real-time video is bandwidth-intensive and delay-sensitive. To address these critical problems, this paper proposes a bandwidth-efficient multipath streaming (BEMA) protocol featured by the priority-aware data scheduling and forward error correction-based reliable transmission. First, we present a mathematical framework to formulate the delay-constrained distortion minimization problem for concurrent video transmission over multiple wireless access networks. Second, we develop a joint Raptor coding and data distribution framework to achieve target video quality with minimum bandwidth consumption. The proposed BEMA is able to effectively mitigate packet reordering and path asymmetry to improve network utilization. We conduct performance evaluation through extensive emulations in Exata involving real-time H.264 video streaming. Compared with the existing multipath protocols, BEMA achieves appreciable improvements in terms of video peak signal-to-noise ratio, end-to-end delay, bandwidth utilization, and goodput. Therefore, BEMA is recommended for streaming high-quality real-time video to multihomed terminals in heterogeneous wireless networks. <s> BIB006 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> Delivering high-definition (HD) wireless video under stringent delay constraint is challenging with regard to the limited network resources and high transmission rate. Concurrent multipath transfer (CMT) using stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) exploits the multihoming feature of mobile devices to establish associations with different access networks. In this paper, we study the multihomed HD video communication with SCTP over heterogeneous wireless networks. The existing CMT schemes mainly treat the traffic data in a content-agnostic fashion, and thus cannot effectively leverage the scarce wireless resources to maximize the perceived video quality. To address this critical issue, we propose a content-aware CMT (CMT-CA) solution that featured by the unequal frame-level scheduling based on estimated video parameters and feedback channel status. First, we develop an analytical framework to model the total distortion of parallel video transmission over multiple wireless access networks. Second, we introduce a joint congestion control and data distribution scheme to minimize the total distortion based on online quality evaluation and Markov decision process (MDP). The performance of CMT-CA is evaluated through extensive semi-physical emulations in Exata involving HD video encoded with H.264 codec. Experimental results show that CMT-CA outperforms the reference schemes in terms of video peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), end-to-end delay, and goodput. Or conversely, CMT-CA achieves the same video quality with $20$ percent bandwidth conservation. <s> BIB007 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> The proliferating wireless infrastructures with complementary characteristics prompt the bandwidth aggregation for concurrent video transmission in heterogeneous access networks. Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is an important transport-layer protocol recommended by IETF to integrate different access medium (e.g., Cellular and Wi-Fi). This paper investigates the problem of mobile video delivery using MPTCP in heterogeneous wireless networks with multihomed terminals. To achieve the optimal quality of real-time video streaming, we have to seriously consider the path asymmetry in different access networks and the disadvantages of the data retransmission mechanism in MPTCP. Motivated by addressing these critical issues, this study presents a novel quAlity-Driven MultIpath TCP (ADMIT) scheme that integrates the utility maximization based Forward Error Correction (FEC) coding and rate allocation. We develop an analytical framework to model the MPTCP-based video delivery quality over multiple communication paths. ADMIT is able to effectively integrate the most reliable access networks with FEC coding to minimize the end-to-end video distortion. The performance of ADMIT is evaluated through extensive semi-physical emulations in Exata involving H.264 video streaming. Experimental results show that ADMIT outperforms the reference transport protocols in terms of video PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), end-to-end delay, and goodput. Thus, we recommend ADMIT for streaming high-quality mobile video in heterogeneous wireless networks with multihomed terminals. <s> BIB008 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> One major concern when applying Multipath TCP (MPTCP) to the real-time multimedia applications is related to MPTCP's fully-reliable and fully-ordered service nature, which will inevitably degrade users' Quality of Experience (QoE) for multimedia streaming services in a heterogeneous wireless network environment because asymmetric wireless links are commonly with different transmission characteristics and sensitive to variations. In this paper, we first discuss the design considerations of partially reliable-MPTCP associated with the real-time constraint of multimedia streaming. Then we propose a context-aware QoE-oriented MPTCP Partial Reliability extension (PR-MPTCP+) for providing partially reliable multimedia streaming service to an upper layer protocol. Finally, we evaluate the proposed PR-MPTCP+ solution using a wide range of multimedia quality metrics. <s> BIB009 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> Transport protocols that can exploit multiple paths, especially MPTCP, do not match the requirements of video streaming: high average transmission delay, too strict reliability, and frequent head-of-line phenomenons resulting in abrupt throughput drops. In this paper, we address this mismatch by introducing a cross-layer scheduler, which leverages information from both application and transport layers to re-order the transmission of data and prioritize the most significant parts of the video. Our objective is to maximize the amount of video data that is received in time at the client. We show that current technologies enable the implementation of this cross-layer scheduler without much overhead. We then demonstrate the validity of our approach by studying the performance of an optimal cross-layer scheduler. The gap between the performance of the traditional scheduler versus the optimal scheduler justifies our motivation to implement a cross-layer scheduler in practice. We propose one implementation with basic cross-layer awareness. To evaluate the performance of our proposal, we aggregate a dataset of real MPTCP sessions and we use video stream encoded with HEVC. Our results show that our cross-layer proposal outperforms the traditional scheduler. Viewers not only benefit from the inherent advantages of using MPTCP (such as a better resilience to path failure) but also get a better QoE compared to the traditional scheduler. <s> BIB010 </s> A Holistic Survey of Wireless Multipath Video Streaming <s> B. Fairness <s> Making networks aware of applications and vice versa is a current trend in the design of emerging network management and service architectures. Additionally, new protocols and application adaptation approaches have been proposed in order to enhance the transmission of Quality of Service (QoS) sensitive data in the best effort Internet. This paper contributes to the field by studying means to improve the quality and availability of video streaming services in multi-access networks through controlled bitrate adaptation and multipath capabilities. The paper proposes a network management system to achieve advanced control and improved performance for multipath adaptive HTTP video streaming in multi-access networks. The management system builds upon the Distributed Decision Engine (DDE) framework and it is partially implemented and evaluated in the paper using a multi-access network testbed. <s> BIB011
Table IX summarizes the surveyed works that consider fairness, which was previously introduced in Section IV. Works address fairness in terms of consumed resources by the proposed congestion algorithms (e.g., MPRTP BIB003 , MPLOT BIB001 , CMT-CL/FD BIB005 ), or as adopted by TFRC (e.g., BEMA BIB006 , CMT-CA BIB007 ) or in terms of MPTCP coupled congestion control (e.g., ADMIT BIB008 , MPTCP-SD/PR BIB002 , PR-MPTCP + BIB009 , Corbillon et al. BIB010 , Ojanperä et al. BIB011 ). Besides, in our surveyed works, Freris at al. BIB004 consider user fairness of network resources.