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Optimised Transmission of H.264 Scalable Video Streams over Multiple Paths in Mobile Networks
James Nightingale, Student Member, Qi Wang, Member, and Christos Grecos, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract Consumer demand for portable wireless devices such as smartphones or tablets capable of receiving high quality video content has risen sharply in recent years. This paper considers the real-time delivery of streamed H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) content to users of such devices within mobile networks (e.g. situations where they are part of a group moving together on a bus or a train). We propose a novel scheme for the multipath delivery of H.264 SVC content to users in multihomed mobile networks .By implementing our scheme on a realistic testbed, we show that it offers a significant improvement in received video quality over previously proposed alternative schemes1. Index Terms H.264 SVC, Mobile Networks, Multihomed, Multipath Streaming.

I. INTRODUCTION The use of a wide range of sophisticated personal wireless devices (laptop, netbook, smartphone, tablets etc.); is becoming commonplace in society. Users of such equipment will expect to be able to make full use of a devices capabilities in everyday situations including when travelling on public transport. There are numerous technical challenges associated with streaming media content to nomadic users in public transport situations. These include mobility management, the low available bandwidth on some public networks and the lack of universal coverage by any individual network. An emerging wireless networking paradigm known as Mobile Networks [1] has been developed to address the mobility requirements of groups of users (or network devices) travelling together in unison. Mobile devices, when acting as nodes in a mobile network, no longer directly connect to the users ISP but rather to a local device within the mobile network that handles mobility on behalf of all nodes. Multihomed mobile networks are those in which multiple heterogeneous access paths to the network can be accessed and used simultaneously. Scarcity of available bandwidth on public access networks may mean that there is insufficient bandwidth on any single network path to ensure delivery of a media stream from server to client. The recent introduction of the H.264 Scalable Video Coding [2] extension to the H.264 Advanced Video Coding Standard (AVC) [3] provides the ability to adapt video streams in response to varying network conditions.
1 James Nightingale, Qi Wang and Christos Grecos are with the Audio Visual Communications and Networks Group, School of Computing, University of the West of the Scotland, Paisley, United Kingdom (e-mail: Firstname.Lastname@uws.ac.uk).

Another way in which bandwidth limitations can be overcome is by using the aggregated bandwidth of all available network paths from streaming server to client in order to maximize the throughput. A number of schemes have been proposed to make best use of this aggregated bandwidth to ensure the delivery of MPEG2 and MPEG4 streams to client nodes which are either static or nomadic but not part of a mobile network. Any such scheme must take account of both available network path conditions and the characteristics of the media stream itself when deciding which path(s) to use for streaming and should ensure that the simultaneous use of multiple paths does not lead to a higher incidence of out-of-sequence packet reception at the client. In this work we apply typical multipath streaming algorithms to H.264 SVC and practically implement them on a testbed offering a realistic multihomed mobile networks environment. We empirically evaluate them and propose an optimised multipath streaming algorithm for use in this previously unconsidered environment. As previous work on multipath streaming schemes has not focused on this environment, some practical factors that affect the performance of multipath streaming algorithms, if applied to multihomed mobile networks, have not been considered. The most significant factors are the nonnegligible addition of tunnelling overheads in mobile networks and the path switching delay in multihomed mobile networks. Our technical contributions are multi-fold and are outlined as follows. Firstly, in our implementation, packet priority weighting schemes designed for AVC in existing work have been extended to include the rich scalability vectors of SVC and to utilise the by far greater degree of granularity offered by SVC over AVC. Secondly we mitigate the previously unconsidered tunneling and path switching overheads encountered in mobile networks. Lastly, we seek to reduce path switching frequency (and associated delay) by both scheduling at an RTP packet level; rather than the previously proposed IP level; and trading off bandwidth aggregation in favour of reduced path switching frequency. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Related work is reviewed in Section II. Section III describes our proposed scheme, while our testbed and implementation is presented in Section IV. Section V presents the results of our empirical comparison of multipath scheduling algorithms and Section IV concludes the paper.

Contributed Paper Manuscript received 10/15/10 Current version published 12/23/10 Electronic version published 12/30/10.

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II.

RELATED WORK

This work brings together aspects of research in both the computer networking community and the real-time video processing community. A. Mobile Networks

greatly extend our previous work by designing and implementing a novel RTP packet level scheduling and switching scheme for SVC streaming. B. Scalable Video Coding H.264 SVC allows the encoding of video sequences as a number of sub-streams. In SVC a stream consists of an AVC compliant base layer, providing a minimum quality of video, and a number of enhancement layers, which improve the quality of the received stream. The three-dimensional scalability of SVC (spatial, temporal and quality), can be used for network or terminal adaptation of streams. To conserve network resources, a sender only transmits those layers that a client node is capable of processing. If there is insufficient bandwidth to deliver the entire stream network adaptation may employed. This will drop higher enhancement layers, reducing the bandwidth requirement and thus ensuring delivery of the base layer and lower enhancement layers. Providing the user with an acceptable quality of video and making efficient use of available bandwidth. A number of schemes have been proposed for the adaption of SVC streams in response to varying network conditions [8], [9]. In [8] an Adaption Decision Taking Engine (ADTE) is placed at the streaming server. It makes real-time stream adaption decisions based on client capability and network path data. This data is contained in MPEG-21 DIA [10] messages sent from the client. The scheme proposed in [9] considers both network conditions and device energy consumption. Neither of these has considered the delivery of SVC in multihomed mobile networks. While work in the IETF to provide a standard for the delivery of SVC over RTP [11] is nearing completion, no freely available streaming servers or playback clients for SVC are currently available. In the absence of such standards and tools, we explore and further develop the Scalable Video Evaluation Framework [12] (SVEF) for the empirical evaluation of real- time SVC streaming. C. Multipath Streaming Algorithms A number of Quality of Service (QoS) related schemes have been proposed to improve delay sensitive media streaming over IP based networks, some of which have considered the use of the aggregated available bandwidth of all network paths from streamer to client. Media-aware schemes such as those proposed by Chebrolou and Rao [13], [14] and Jurca and Frossard [15]; take account of the characteristics of both the media stream and current conditions on available network paths when deciding how to distribute a video stream across multiple paths. Of these schemes, only [15] considers a scalable video format; however, [15] is a simple generic format rather than the sophisticated three dimensional scalability of SVC. These multipath streaming algorithms make path selection and scheduling decisions on a per packet basis at the IP level and in the case of [15] drops packets that cannot be successfully scheduled. This differs significantly from schemes such as [8] where adaptation is at a per SVC layer granularity. Multipath scheduling and scheduling can lead to out-of-sequence delivery of packets at the client, which

Fig. 1. A typical multihomed mobile networks topology.

The Network Mobility (NEMO) [4] protocol, a further development of MIPv6 [5], allows groups of users travelling together to connect to a local device called a Mobile Router (MR) that handles the mobility management requirements of all of its attached mobile network nodes (MNN). Fig. 1 shows a simplified topology of a multihomed mobile network. Mobility is handled by two NEMO mobility agents, one of which is the Home Agent (HA) residing in the MRs home network and the other is at the MR itself . Any data packets destined for a node in the mobile network are routed via the HA where they are encapsulated for tunnelling to the MR. Packets are then transmitted over a bi-directional tunnel between HA and MR. At the MR the encapsulation header is removed and the packets are forwarded to the MNN. The tunnelling process from HA to MR adds an additional network overhead to each IP packet transmitted and as the traffic from all network nodes must pass through the link from the MR to the radio access point, this link can become the bottleneck on the transmission path. In multihomed mobile networks the mobile router has multiple network interfaces, each of which is connected to a different radio access network. These access networks, may employ a variety of heterogeneous radio technologies or simply provide homogeneous connections to different service providers. The MR is able to make simultaneous use of all attached access networks, and thus circumvent the single link bottleneck. We have previously addressed the issue of path selection in multihomed mobile networks by proposing a scheme [6], [7] to provide an always best connected path in such networks. In that scheme, we provided a general-policy driven mechanism that exploits current path condition metrics and application specific rules to determine the current best path for an application flow. The path is changed as required at the application flow level per application. In this paper, we

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then requires a larger input buffer; this can be a limiting factor for resource-constrained mobile devices. In Earliest Delivery First (EDF) [13] and Earliest Delivery Path First (EDPF) [14] algorithms, the network metrics of available bandwidth and delay on each path and the size of each packet are used to estimate the arrival time at the client. A packet is always sent on the path offering the earliest arrival time, thus reducing out-of-sequence delivery. The heuristic load balancing algorithm (LBA) from [15] also performs stream adaptation in response to changing network path states by only transmitting those packets that are estimated to arrive at the client in time to be of use in the decoding process. Additionally, LBA conserves bandwidth by dropping packets that cannot be decoded because they rely (for decoding) on a previous packet that has already been dropped. A packet prioritisation scheme in LBA gives a higher weighting to I frames over B and P frames and also to base layer packets over enhancement layer packets. The LBA scheduler sorts packets according to priority weighting, and sacrifices lower priority packets to ensure the delivery of those with a higher priority. Placement of the scheduling mechanism in LBA is at the streaming server equipped with multiple network interfaces, each of which provides a completely independent path to the client. In EDPF, the mechanism is placed at the HA. Both approaches have limitations. In the case of LBA it is more likely that, in a realistic network setting, the point of divergence of paths will be at a router rather that at the server itself. With EDPF the issue is of placing a computationally intensive mechanism on the HA, which is a router rather than a sever and has already been occupied with mobility management tasks. Moreover, if a bi-directional streaming process is considered, the scheduling burden would fall on the resource constrained MR when the MNN is acting as the streamer. EDPF assumes a stable negotiated bandwidth for the duration of a streaming session, while LBA and the scheme in [8] consider dynamic path conditions. III. PROPOSED ALGORITHM We propose a path selection and packet scheduling algorithm for use in multihomed mobile networks in which we take account of the previously unconsidered network overheads associated with this environment. A. Factors Influencing Path Choice Each of the algorithms discussed in section II considers a different set of factors when making a path selection or packet scheduling decision. EDPF only considers the size of a media packet together with available bandwidth and delay but ignore packet dependencies and the unequal importance of packets in a video stream. While LBA does consider these additional factors and also queuing times at intermediate routing nodes, it was targeted at wired networks and did not address mobility issues. The first additional factor that we consider is the mobility-related networking overhead added to each IP packet transmitted by the streamer. If the size of an RTP packet exceeds the Ethernet maximum transmission unit (MTU) size

of 1500 bytes it will be fragmented into several IP packets, each of which will have its own mobility related network overhead added.

Fig. 2. RTP packet sizes in the 30 fps of the Soccer sequence. The majority of RTP packets are larger than the Ethernet MTU. Almost 5% are more than ten times the MTU size.

The size of the additional overhead added to each packet is dependent on the level of nesting within a mobile network. Each packet is tunnelled from the HA to the MR and has an encapsulation overhead added to the packets overall transmitted size. In our experiments, 58 % of packets in the Bus sequence at 30 fps were greater than the MTU, as can be seen in Fig. 2, and this was higher at 70% for the 30 fps Soccer sequence. The second additional factor that we consider is the path switching delay in multihomed mobile networks. In previous work [6], [7] we proposed a path switching mechanism to support our Always Best Connected path approach. In this work we have further implemented this switching mechanism as a path control module at the streaming server and a client module at the HA where path switching takes place. As a precursor to our main streaming experiments, we measured the delay introduced by each path switching operation as shown in Fig. 3. It was found that the average switching delay in our realistic mobile networks testbed is 137ms.

Fig. 3. Delay introduced by path switching using the Bus sequence at 30fps.

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RTP packet that does not require fragmentation f and the mobility overhead m that will be dependent on the level of nesting in the mobile network. Each additional IP packet of a fragmented RTP packet will also have its own network overhead a and a mobility overhead added. The number of fragments Fi of RTP packet ri is derived by dividing the RTP payload size by the MTU. The full network size Ni is calculated from the initial single packet overhead and the extra overheads of each fragment.

Ni=Li+( f+ m)+Fi( a+ m)

(1)

Fig. 4. Inputs considered by each algorithm and possible scheduling outcomes that can be made.

This is a very significant delay in a real-time streaming scenario. Failure to consider this delay has a severe impact on streaming performance. In Fig. 3 each path switching can be clearly identified as the next packet to arrive after a path switching is delayed significantly. Fig. 4 provides a comparison of the metrics considered by each EDPF, LBA and our Optimised Path Selection and Scheduling Algorithm (OPPSA) and highlights the fact that OPSSA is the only scheme to consider mobility-related metrics and SVC scalability. B. Description of OPPSA Each SVC Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) unit in a video stream has a decoding deadline. This is the time, relative to the first NAL in the stream, by which it must arrive at the client to be useful in the decoding process. This decoding deadline is a function of the frame rate. Each NAL unit ni in the stream has a decoding deadline di, and an estimated arrival time at the client ai. The scheduling process uses the estimated arrival time of the first NAL unit as the reference decoding deadline. The relative decoding deadline of subsequent NAL units is calculated using the video frame number fi that it belongs to and the sequence frame rate in frames per second (fps). Such that di =(f i / )x1000 ms. A NAL unit can only be useful in the decoding process, if it arrives within its own decoding window as determined by its decoding deadline, and the playback delay at the client. If ai (di + ) the NAL unit is useable in the decoding process. Using the estimated arrival time of the first packet as the decoding reference point removes the need for client streamer synchronisation. The method used to calculate estimated arrival time at the client is dependent on which algorithm is used and is described in section IV. By calculating the full on the wire size of each RTP packet of payload size Li and using it in the estimated arrival time calculation, we mitigate the possibility of incorrect scheduling decisions due to erroneous arrival time estimation. Overheads consist of the network overhead (RTP, UDP and IPv6) of an

Adding the path switching delay to the estimated arrival time of a packet on all paths other than the current path allows for better scheduling decisions and makes best use of available bandwidth by only sending those packets that will arrive in time to be of use in the decoding process. Packets within a streaming window are sorted by priority weighting and decoding deadline, and we ensure that no lower priority packet will be able to adversely effect the arrival time on a previously scheduled higher priority packet. By doing this, we are able to deliver high priority packets, in times of congestion or limited available bandwidth by dropping lower priority packets. Given that path switching introduces a considerable delay, we seek to reduce the path switching frequency. Firstly, scheduling is performed at an RTP packet level rather than an IP level; this reduces the number of potential path switching (particularly where the paths have similar characteristics) and is logical as priority information is not carried at an IP packet level. Secondly, further reduction in switching frequency is made a trade off against bandwidth aggregation by only changing paths if the current path can no longer deliver the next packet on time. Video Coding Layer (VCL) NAL units in an SVC stream contain scalability information. For AVC compliant base layer NAL units, this information is carried in an accompanying SVC type NAL unit. With one exception, employ a one NAL unit per RTP packet strategy. For AVC compliant base layer NAL units, we use the Single Time Aggregation Packet (STAP) proposed in [11]. In STAP packets, we include an SVC type 14 prefix NAL unit providing scalability information and the base layer NAL unit that it describes. This information gives the layer number of a packet for each of the three scalability dimensions (Lid (i.e. Did) = spatial layer id, Tid = temporally layer id and Qid = quality layer id). When combined with GOP size and frame number data, this provides a complete description of each SVC NAL unit. We create a packet prioritisation scheme, in which the number of different weights available is specific to each stream and is calculated as the product of the number of Lid layers , the number of Tid layers and the number of Qid layers plus 3 additional weightings to accommodate the Non-VCL stream header, parameter set and the SVC Supplemental Enhancement Information (SEI) NAL units. Therefore the total number of weightings = ( . . )+3. In [12] a simple formula is used to calculate a NAL units weighting based on two scalability dimensions, (Tid and Qid).

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By extending this scheme to all three dimensions such that weighting = ( .Lid)+( .Tid)+Qid, we provide a scheme that reflects the full granularity of SVC. In this work, we applied only a small number of the available weightings rather than deploying the full granularity described above. We did this in order to provide the ability to map our weightings to the scheme used in [15] that is reliant on I, P and B frame types rather than the SVC scalability data. We are therefore able to provide a fair comparison with representative algorithms from literature and evaluate effects of the other novel components in our architecture. We performed this mapping in our pre-processing module. It should also be noted that the default JSVM encoder [16] output order for SVC streams already offers a degree of prioritisation of NAL units by sending those pictures (within a GOP), which are required for prediction by others in the GOP earliest to try and ensure their delivery. This is shown in Fig. 5.In LBA [15] all ancestors of a packet are identified. If any packet upon which the current packet relies for decoding has not already been scheduled, LBA attempts to do so. If any ancestor is cannot be scheduled, the current packet is dropped. The exact method of determining a packets ancestors in realtime is not discussed in [15]. Our practical implementation limits the ancestor checking function to within the current window of knowledge (read ahead window) of the streamer. To identify a packets ancestors, we make use of SVC scalability information, frame number and GOP size data. The frame number and scalability information of any NAL unit contained in dropped packet within the current window (typically 1 or 2 GOPs in length) is stored in memory. By comparing the frame number, Lid, Tid and Qid of the current packet to those of failed packets in the current window, we can establish if a packets ancestors have been scheduled without the need for the expensive recursive searching method employed in [15]. As the read ahead window is small, the data stored for each packet is only 5 bytes and only data for packets dropped in the current window is stored; the memory overhead in our scheme is minimal, making it suitable for resource-constrained devices.

Fig. 6. Path Monitoring & Control.

Since current path measurement tools generally need a number of round trip times to accurately estimate path conditions and the authors of EDPF and LBA have assumed the instant availability of current path metrics, we designed and implemented a path control mechanism, which makes changes to path conditions within the core network and reports any changes (in less than 10ms) to the streaming server. This is similar to the virtual choke point in [17]. Fig 6 provides a diagram of the signalling involved in this path monitoring and control mechanism. When a path change is required, the path switching control module at the streamer signals the new path number to the client module on the HA. Where the change is implemented and acknowledged. The controller then updates the scheduler with the time taken for the path switching. This allows the time at which a path next becomes free to be accurately estimated when calculating the arrival time of the next packet. Signalling for this is shown in Fig. 7. A diagrammatic representation of our OPSSA algorithm is given in Fig. 8.

Fig. 5. Inputs considered by each algorithm and possible scheduling outcomes that can be made.

Fig. 7. Path Switching Mechanism

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IV. IMPLEMENTATION

Fig. 9. Topology of our multihomed mobile networks testbed.

We provide a practical Linux user space implementation of three path selection and scheduling algorithms (EDPF, LBA and the proposed OPSSA) on a realistic multihomed mobile networks testbed. Our testbed, the topology of which is shown in Fig. 9, consists of standard PCs running Ubuntu Linux for the video streaming server, the mobility-management home agent, the core routers, the mobile network router and mobile network clients in our testbed. Two paths are provided between the video streaming server and the multihomed mobile network. Each path consists of a 100Mbps Ethernet wired link incorporating a core router running wide-area network emulation and path monitoring modules and an IEEE 802.11g wireless link offered by a modified Linksys WRT54GL wireless router. All PCs used in the testbed have 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 processors with mobility agents and core routers having 1 GB of RAM and the end nodes (streaming server and mobile client) having 512 MB of RAM. Mobility management is provided by NEMO running at both the home agent and the mobile router.

Fig. 8. Optimized scheduling algorithm.

Fig. 10. Testbed path switching and monitoring overview.

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Fig. 10 gives an overview of the design of our testbed. We incorporate mechanisms to provide path switching and path monitoring functions which, when combined with our scheduling implementation, provide an application-specific (SVC streaming) instance of the Network Selection Algorithm [6] (NSA) or always best connected service [7] introduced in our previous work. SVEF [12] is an open source testing and evaluation tool for single path IPv4 transmission of stored SVC content. As next generation networks use the IPv6 version of the Internet Protocol, we have rewritten the network interface of SVEF to support both IPv4 and IPv6 address families and the MIPv6 based mobility management software used in mobile networks. The SVEF trace file is extended by rewriting the existing pre-processing module to calculate the relative decoding deadline (in relation to the first NAL unit in a stream) and priority weighting of each NAL unit. The preprocessor permits the easy sorting of the trace file to test a number of algorithms and streaming scenarios. V. EVALUATION All three algorithms (EDPF, LBA and the proposed OSPSA) that have been implemented on our mobile networks testbed are empirically compared. Publicly available video sequences were encoded using the JSVM reference software and the performance of each algorithm compared in terms of packet delivery statistics and statistical video quality metrics. Versions of the Soccer sequence with 4CIF (704x576) resolution were used at frame rates of 30 and 60 fps, together with versions of the Bus sequence with QCIF (176x144) resolution and frame rates of 15 and 30 fps. Each was encoded with a base layer and two MGS scalability layers. We implemented a comprehensive logging scheme at both the streamer and client. The streamer recorded packet size, identity, SVC scalability data, mobility overhead and the scheduling decision for each packet. Each path switching and the delay introduced was also recorded. At the client the arrival time relative to the first packet in the stream is recorded. To understand the effect on performance of added mobility overheads, we compared two versions of our optimised algorithm, one which mitigated the additional overheads and one which used the payload size only when calculating expected the arrival time of a packet. We used both sequences across the full range of frame rates. The mobility overhead added to the Soccer sequence at 30 fps increased the size of the stream by 4.83% the added overhead will be even more significant in nested mobile networks with hierarchical mobile routers. When the overheads were not taken into account, the number of packets arriving at the client that were unusable at the client (either due to arriving after their decoding deadline or because an ancestor had arrived after its decoding deadline) increased on average by 6.1%. The Bus sequence, which has fewer large packets, performed better than the Soccer sequence. The number of base layer packets failing to arrive on time also increased (from 0.05% to 0.8 % for the Soccer sequence) and received video quality was reduced. The PSNR of the Soccer sequence was reduced by 0.36 dB and the Bus

sequence by 0.14 dB. We, therefore, have shown that the effects on video quality of added mobility overheads in mobile networks are significant.

Fig. 11. Path switching frequency (data collected at the streamer).

Path switching frequency is influenced by a number of factors, apart from the algorithm used. These include the relative difference between paths in terms of available bandwidth and delay and the size of the RTP packets being scheduled as larger packets have longer transmission times. In our experiments, we found that packet size influenced path switching frequency, effective bandwidth aggregation rate and was the largest single factor (when translated to transmission time) even on paths with higher available bandwidth and low delay. In our algorithm, we trade off effective bandwidth aggregation and reduced path switching frequency. This strategy, as can be seen in Fig 11, is more effective when paths characteristics are unequal. OPSSA outperforms all of the others, including a path switching compensated version of LBA that we implemented for comparative purposes and configured with a 137ms path switching compensation value. The cumulative effect of unmitigated path switching delays can be clearly seen in Fig. 12, where packets delivered via EDPF and LBA implementations, which do not consider the switching cost, very quickly begin to deliver packets later than their decoding deadline and thus rendering them useless in the decoding process.

Fig. 12. Comparison of packet arrival times at client for EDPF, LBA and OPPSA using a 30 fps Bus sequence.

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Fig. 14. Video quality comparison measured using PSNR Fig. 13. Packets arriving at the client, those that are within their decode window and those which are useable in the decode process.

The results clearly demonstrate OPSSA delivers the majority of packets within the decoding deadline. The cyclic nature of the decoding deadline on the graph results from the way in which packets are sorted by priority weighting and then decoding deadline on a per read ahead window basis. It should be noted that only those packets that arrived at the client for each frame are included in the graph. Fewer packets are delivered by OPSSA than either EDPF or LBA due to the dropping at the streamer of packets that were estimated not to arrive on time. From Fig 13 it can be observed that OPSSA provides the highest number of useable packets to the client while also sending the lowest number of packets. This effect was more pronounced on high differential paths and on the Soccer sequence where the packet size distribution in the stream is less equal than with the Bus sequence. Even if a packet arrives on time it can only be used if packets that it depends on also arrived on time. The received video quality, when measured using the statistical Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) metric is higher for OPSSA than for the other schemes. EDPF and LBA do not perform satisfactorily as they do not consider the additional overheads and switching costs. Path switching compensated LBA performs better but still has a higher path switching frequency and does not consider the mobility overheads. Although it provides an acceptable quality of received video, it does not perform as well as OPSSA. The results of our received video quality measurements are shown in Fig. 14. The PSNR of both LBA and EDPF quickly fall below acceptable limits while OPSSA and path switching compensated LBA perform significantly better, confirming our hypothesis that path switching overhead is a significant limiting factor that effects multipath streaming in multihomed mobile networks. One of the limitations of the current version of the JSVM decoder is its inability to correctly deal with

packets that have unmet dependencies. We, therefore use the SVEF framefiller mechanism to firstly generate a filtered copy of the video sequence containing only those packets that correctly arrived at the client on time to be of use in the decoding process and had all ancestor packet available at the decoder. The simple SVEF frame filler routine is then applied to conceal missing parts of the sequence. This reconstructed video sequence is compared to the original sequence using the JSVM reference software PSNR comparison tool. VI. CONCLUSIONS In this work, we have introduce a scheme for the delivery of H.264 SVC streams across multiple paths in multihomed mobile networks. We have demonstrated that mobility overheads and path switching costs are significant factors that must be considered when distributing a stream across multiple paths in this environment. Furthermore, we have shown that our algorithm (OPSSA) outperforms representative algorithms from literature (in terms of PSNR) when implemented in this context. Our experiments were performed on a testbed environment with realistic switching costs of; on average 137ms. By trading off bandwidth aggregation against a reduced level of path switching, our scheme; provides a higher quality video stream to the client. Improvements range from 0.4 to 1.0 dB (dependant on sequence and encoding) for equal paths, to in excess of 2.3dB for paths where one has a substantially higher capacity than the other. Our work has substantially extended previous representative algorithms for use with H.264 SVC streams in multihomed mobile networks. We have provided both an SVC packet prioritisation scheme suitable for use with multipath streaming algorithms and a low cost means of determining, if a packets ancestors have been scheduled in real time. The proposed algorithm OPSSA, is suitable for use on resourceconstrained devices.

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BIOGRAPHIES

[2]

[3]

James Nightingale (S09) received the BSc degree in Network Computing from Edinburgh Napier University, UK and the BSc (Hons) degree in Computer Networks from the University of the West of Scotland, UK, where he currently a Ph.D. student. His research interests include mobile networks, multihoming and video streaming techniques.

[4] [5] [6]

[7]

[8]

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Qi Wang (S02-M06) Dr Qi Wang is a Lecturer in Computer Networking with the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), UK. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the University of Strathclyde, UK, and a Telecommunications engineer with the State Grid Corporation of China. He received his PhD in Mobile Networking from the University of Plymouth, UK, and his BEng and MEng degrees from Dalian Maritime University, China. Recently, he has been involved in the European Union FP6 MULTINET project and the UK EPSRC DIAS project. His research interests include Internet Protocol networks and applications, diverse wireless networks, mobility management, multihoming support and intelligent network selection, and cross-layer design. He is a member of IEEE, and on the technical programme committees of a number of international conferences.

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Christos Grecos (M01-SM06) Prof Christos Grecos is a Professor in Visual Communications Standards, and Head of School of Computing, the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), UK. He leads the AudioVisual Communications and Networks Research Group (AVCN) with UWS, and his research interests include image/video compression standards, image/video processing and analysis, image/video networking and computer vision. He has published numerous research papers in top-tier international publications including a number of IEEE transactions on these topics. He is on the editorial board or served as guest editor for numerous international journals, and he has been invited to give talks in various international conferences. He was the Principal Investigator for several national or international projects funded by UK EPSRC or EU. He received his PhD degree in Image/Video Coding Algorithms from the University of Glamorgan, UK. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.