Clearmedia: A Proxy-based Architecture for Streaming Media Services over Wireless Networks

Streaming media over wireless networks typically rely on end-to-end feedback from client devices to help media servers adjust to changing channel conditions. In rapidly fluctuating channel conditions, the client device may not be able to effectively track changes and report them to the server. Furthermore, bandwidth constraints often limit the frequency of end-to-end feedback. In order to overcome these constraints, we propose Clearmedia, a signaling proxy-based architecture for streaming media services over wireless networks. This architecture enables media servers to receive frequent and reliable feedback on network conditions, which leads to enhanced service quality. Our performance studies show that the Clearmedia architecture achieves improvement in several key performance metrics that are representative of end-user perceived video quality.