Peer-assisted video streaming based on network coding and Beer-Quiche game

This paper presents a novel peer-assisted video streaming based on game theory and network coding. Interactions between peers are modeled by a famous signaling game called Beer-Quiche. The Nash equilibrium analysis of the proposed game provides a reward and punishment mechanism which guarantees the free-riders failure and participation motivation. Due to using the game theory at design time, there is no additional complexity in the proposed method in contrast with many recent similar studies. Furthermore, it has avoided many inherent p2p system overheads such as frequent buffer mapping exchange between peers to obtain the necessary information about available chunks to other. The proposed scheme guarantees watching the video with minimum quality and eliminates the ability of peers to deny their own data. In order to create fairness, fine peers classification based on their action rating and request dispatch balancing are other achieved principles. The experimental results indicate that cooperative peers can receive 100% of base layer video chunks and get more than 99% of other high quality layers. Free-riders can not achieve more than 16% of video chunks even in the best case. Also, the sequel of low synergy is low received chunks in the proposed mechanism.