Buffer aware three level scheduler for video streaming over LTE

Abstract

The ever increasing demand for high bandwidth, low latency multimedia applications on mobile devices is set to pose a considerable challenge on the bandwidth allocation and multiplexing mechanisms in LTE and future wireless networks. One of the most important factors that diminish the quality of viewing experience of delivered videos is frequent client side rebuffering events. This paper proposes a buffer-aware downlink scheduling framework (called BA-TLS) for streaming video applications. The problem of scheduling a set of video streams over LTE has first been formulated as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem. It has been shown that a conventional dynamic programming solution for the ILP imposes prohibitive online overheads. Then, by utilizing analytical properties of the problem, a genetic algorithm based fast and efficient radio resource allocation heuristic has been implemented over the proposed framework. Experimental results reveal that the developed framework is able to provide significant reductions in rebuffering events and thus allow video transmission with high and acceptable quality of service.