Robust video multicast under rate and channel variability with applications to wireless LANs

We consider the problem of robust multicast of video to clients having disparate bandwidths and channel loss profiles. We pose this problem as an optimization problem in a multiple description (MD) coding framework and offer a solution that jointly considers the rate-distortion characteristics of the multicast video stream and the receiver channel parameters. In this work, we confine ourselves to a single multicast stream, though extensions to more than one stream are straightforward. Our problem is particularly applicable to the wireless LAN environment where client mobility results in channels with diverse loss and bandwidth characteristics, with the sender unable to adapt dynamically to these changes due to feedback implosion in the multicast setting.