Scalable Video Multicast on Broadcast Channels

We propose a framework for multicasting layers of scalable video over a broadcast channel to multiple users simultaneously. The framework ensures that all users receive the content, but at differentiated levels of quality depending on channel conditions. A coding scheme well-suited to this purpose is Scalable Video Coding (SVC). In particular, we employ medium-grain scalability (MGS), which allows us to generate quality-scalable layers from a single video sequence. For transport, we assume that both the transmitter and endusers are equipped with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transceivers. The transmitter employs the zero-forcing (ZF) preceding technique, which yields good performance with low complexity. With these assumptions, the scheme proposed here computes a block-diagonal ZF-precoder at fixed intervals, subject to a power constraint at the transmitter. Crucially, the algorithm assigns quality-scalable layers of video to the end-users jointly with precoder computation. The framework also ensures that delay and buffer constraints are met, which is necessary for realtime video. In terms of solution approach, the problem turns out to be a difficult mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problem.