A Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation Scheme based on Playback Buffer Level in a Distributed Mobile Multimedia System

In this paper, we propose a scheme for dynamic allocating network bandwidth based on the playback buffer levels of the clients in a distributed mobile multimedia system. In this scheme, the amount of bandwidth allocated to serve a video request depends on the buffer level of the requesting client. If the buffer level of a client is low or high temporarily, more or less bandwidth will be allocated to serve it with an objective to make it more adaptive to the playback situation of this client. By employing the playback buffer level based bandwidth allocation policy, fair services can also be provided to the clients. In order to support high quality video playbacks, video frames must be transported to the client prior to their playback times. The main objectives in this bandwidth allocation scheme are to enhance the quality of service and performance of individual video playback such as to minimize the number of dropped video frames and at the same time to provide fair services to all the concurrent video requests. The performance of the proposed scheme is compared with that of other static bandwidth allocation scheme through extensive simulation experiments, resulting in the 4-9% lower ratio of frames dropped according to the buffer level.