Asynchronous and Reliable Multimedia Multicast with Heterogeneous QoS Constraints

We present an asynchronous and reliable multicast framework for a scalable multimedia system. An unequal error protection (UEP) transmission scheme employing a layered packetization structure and rateless codes is proposed. With this scheme, asynchronous data reception and guaranteed quality-of-service (QoS) can be achieved at the same time. Furthermore, a novel allocation algorithm is developed within the layered multicast framework, which can minimize the system cost in terms of the number of transmitted packets. Simulation results show that the proposed rateless-codes-based transmission scheme works well for asynchronous multicasting to heterogeneous receivers, and can be applied to a wide range of multimedia applications.