Adaptive Video Streaming Using Bandwidth Estimation for 3.5G Mobile Network

Currently deployed mobile networks including High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) offer only best-effort Quality of Service (QoS). In wireless best effort networks, the bandwidth variation is a critical problem, especially, for mobile devices with small buffers. This is because the bandwidth variation leads to packet losses caused by buffer overflow as well as picture freezing due to high transmission delay or buffer underflow. In this paper, in order to provide seamless video streaming over HSDPA, we propose an efficient real-time video streaming method that consists of the available bandwidth (AB) estimation for the HSDPA network and the transmission rate control to prevent buffer overflows/underflows. In the proposed method, the client estimates the AB and the estimated AB is fed back to the server through real-time transport control protocol (RTCP) packets. Then, the server adaptively adjusts the transmission rate according to the estimated AB and the buffer state obtained from the RTCP feedback information. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves seamless video streaming over the HSDPA network providing higher video quality and lower transmission delay.