Transmission control of Variable-Bit-Rate video streaming in UMTS networks

Variable-Bit-Rate (VBR) video transmission over UMTS networks is assuming an ever growing importance, then scheduling VBR data over wireless channels attracts great interest today. This paper proposes an on-line PI control algorithm for easily and suitably scheduling interactive multimedia transmission of VBR video streams. It dynamically adapts the transmitted bit rate to the user's actions that can suddenly and highly modify the client buffer level. The Real-time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP) packets periodically feed back the buffer level to the server for keeping the free buffer space at 50% of its capacity, so as to prevent both buffer overflow and underflow. Numerical results of different simulated scenarios show the effectiveness of the proposed controller in comparison with two well-established algorithms, enhanced with RTCP information.