Multi-view video streaming over wireless networks with RD-optimized scheduling of network coded packets

Abstract

Multi-view video streaming is an emerging video paradigm that enables new interactive services, such as free viewpoint television and immersive teleconferencing. However, it comes with a high bandwidth cost, as the equivalent of many single-view streams has to be transmitted. Network coding (NC) can improve the performance of the network by allowing nodes to combine received packets before retransmission. Several works have shown NC to be beneficiai in wireless networks, but the delay introduced by buffering before decoding raises a problem in real-time streaming applications. Here, we propose to use Expanding Window NC (EWNC) for multi-view streaming to allow immediate decoding of the received packets. The order in which the packets are included in the coding window is chosen via RD-optimization for the current sending opportunity. Results show that our approach consistently outperforms both classical NC applied on each view independently and transmission without NC.