Fuzzy Control of Adaptive Timeout for Video Streaming over a Bluetooth Interconnect

Bluetooth´s default ARQ scheme is not well suited to real-time video streaming, resulting in missed display and decode deadlines. Therefore, adaptive ARQ combined with a deadline aware buffer is an alternative approach. However, even with the addition of adaptation to picture type content importance, ARQ is not ideal in conditions of deteriorating RF channel. The paper presents fuzzy logic control of ARQ, based on send buffer fullness and the head of line packet´s deadline. Tests show an improvement of over 4 dB improvement in video quality compared to a non-fuzzy scheme. The scheme can be applied to any codec with I-, P- and (possibly) B-slices by inspection of packet headers without encoder intervention.