Adaptable video compression and transmission using lossy and workload balancing techniques

Wireless video streaming is becoming more prevalent in our society and the demand for solutions that accompany it is growing tremendously. The characteristics of wireless channels (available bandwidth) and wireless devices (limited power supply, heterogeneity) create significant challenges for the existing technology. In this paper, we look at the current approaches (lossy compression and workload balancing) that adapt resources for wireless video streaming. In related works, lossy compression has been used to reduce required bandwidth and decrease energy consumption at the cost of video quality. Workload balancing has been used to re-distribute workload between participating devices based on their remaining energy. In this paper, we unify both approaches and discuss a framework that adapts resources to current conditions in order to (i) maximize device lifetime and (ii) meet energy, bandwidth and quality constraints. Results show that our proposed system makes the best use of energy and bandwidth, maintains video quality, and obtains 9% increase in lifetime on average when compared to systems which apply only lossy compression or workload balancing.