Spectrum Access Quality for Mobile Broadband Video Communications in Smart Cities

Abstract

Cities use broadband wireless spectrum access technologies to enable a wide range of smart city applications that enhance safety and security, improve efficiency of municipal services and promote a better quality of life for residents and visitors. The most quality and bandwidth-demanding smart city scenarios usually involve video communications. New compression technologies have made the delivery of high-resolution video over access networks a reality. However, video delivery must take into account network characteristics in different environmental conditions. This paper studies the possibility of providing high resolution video in mobile environments over the downlink and uplink of a broadband wireless access network, without compromising the video quality. The downlink scenario typically corresponds to offering multicast/unicast video to mobile residents and visitors, whereas the uplink scenario can be for video surveillance for public safety and electronic news gathering. For this study, measurements were obtained using professional video streaming equipment, on a commercially available broadband wireless access system in a typical emulated mobile environment. Analysis was done for different video settings and spectrum and network configurations in order to characterize network performance and assess video quality in different conditions. A key outcome of this analysis was to determine the feasibility of high resolution video delivery over broadband wireless access networks in mobile conditions and to point recommendations for the QoE optimization of mobile video reception. A good quality of experience is possible provided that system and environment limitations are respected.