Evaluating the mission effectiveness of dynamic user preferences in video streaming applications

Bandwidth limitations restrict the frame rate and resolution of video feeds transmitted to users in wireless surveillance networks. This paper investigates whether Dynamic Preference Specification (DPS), which gives users the ability to dynamically specify preferences regarding frame rate and resolution, positively affects the ability to achieve surveillance tasks. User preference information is used in an application-layer, utility-based flow control algorithm to adjust frame rate and resolution in an effort to maximize the utility delivered by the system, subject to a bandwidth constraint. DPS is tested in a human subject experiment against a static-preference scheme (control setting) that places equal weighting on frame rate and resolution, with the null hypothesis being that there is no difference between DPS and the control setting in terms of system performance. While the results of the experiment allow us to reject the null hypothesis, the amount of improvement associated with DPS depends strongly on the nature of the video feed.