Effect of Varying the Intra-Frame Packet Burstiness on the Performance of Wireless Video Streaming

We develop a simple, yet robust, application-layer adaptation technique based on scalable video codecs. The proposed technique can adapt to the varying capacity available to a connection in order to deliver video with a superior quality. We take advantage of both scalable video properties and the characteristics of the packet dropping random process at the last link´s wireless router´s queue. By fine-tuning the inter-packet transmission time at the server side, we show that the resulting packet loss pattern yields a superior quality of experience (QoE) without any changes in the wireless router´s packet scheduling or drop policies. In other words, by varying the per frame packet inter-spacing time while maintaining a given frame rate (i.e., by varying the transmission burstiness) one can control the QoE. Our proposal is founded on an analytical model to study the loss pattern of individual packets in a n-packet burst.