Improving mobile video streaming with link aware scheduling and client caches

The rapid growth in multimedia traffic is straining mobile networks thus necessitating the need for efficient content delivery mechanisms. In this paper we present the design and analysis of a scheme for streaming non-live, pre-recorded content (e.g. Video on Demand) that opportunistically takes advantage of the “slow fading” variations in the wireless link quality. The proposed scheme works by selectively sending more content to sessions at times when they have better link quality while providing sufficient rate guarantees to keep their buffers from under-flowing. We establish analytically that the performance of such scheme is within two times that of any optimal scheme and that it results in throughput gains, per user and aggregate, that increase in proportion to the number of streaming users. Our performance evaluations indicate that by exploiting slow time-varying channels the streaming capacity can more than double with significant benefits to the users at the edge of the cell.