Scalable video streaming over WiMAX networks

The Multicast/Broadcast Service (MBS) feature of mobile WiMAX network is a promising technology for providing wireless multimedia, because it allows the delivery of multimedia content to large-scale user communities in a cost-efficient manner. In this thesis, we focus on two research problems in such networks: (i) maximizing the video quality and (ii) minimizing energy consumption for mobile receivers. We prove that these problems are NP-Complete, and propose constant factor approximation algorithms to solve them. Our algorithms intelligently select video layers from a scalable video stream to maximize video quality and construct burst transmission schedules that reduce receiver device energy consumption without sacrificing the video quality. Using extensive simulation and mathematical analysis we show that the proposed solution: (i) is efficient in terms of execution time, (ii) achieves high radio resource utilization, (iii) maximizes the received video quality, and (iv) minimizes the energy consumption for mobile receivers.