Adaptive transmission of variable-bit-rate video streams to mobile devices

In recent years, mobile devices have become more powerful in terms of computing power, memory, and screen size. This has resulted in increasing demand for multimedia services for mobile devices. In this thesis, we focus on two research problems of maximizing energy saving and maximizing ontime transmitted video frames in multicast/broadcast mobile video networks. We propose a novel algorithm to efficiently transmit multiple variable-bit-rate video streams from a base station to mobile receivers in wide-area wireless networks. The proposed algorithm transmits video streams in bursts to save the energy of mobile devices and adaptively controls the buffer level of mobile receivers. We have implemented the proposed algorithm as well as two other recent algorithms in a mobile video streaming testbed. Our extensive analysis and results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms recent algorithms and it results in higher energy saving for mobile devices and fewer dropped video frames.