Wireless video applications in 3G and beyond

This article surveys wireless video applications that have been commercialized recently or are expected to go to market in 3G (and beyond) mobile networks, mainly covering error control technologies in view of "wireless video." We introduce several related 3GPP standards including circuit-switched multimedia telephony, end-to-end packet-switched streaming, multimedia messaging service, and multimedia broadcast /multimedia service. We also review the supporting technologies for those four applications. The article concludes with a discussion of error control and rate control adaptability to network QoS variation, which is distinct from wired networks and critical to wireless networks. With respect to MBMS, we point out that required cell transmission power is crucial when realizing meaningful multicast coverage, and suggest a system that integrates different unicast and multicast networks, application-layer data repair, and transmission scheduling.