Development of Collaborative Video Streaming for Mobile Networks: From Overview to Prototype

Advances in the 3G and LTE technologies made video on-demand a very popular entertainment for people on the go. However, uniform coverage of mobile networks is almost impossible and, in addition, we often experience drops in bandwidth due to handovers between cellular stations, interference and admission control. In this paper, we analyse the state-of-the-art approaches to streaming on-demand videos, describe the lesson learnt and develop a solution based on our earlier proposal (Col Stream) to improve the user experience. The new Col Stream solution includes an incentive mechanism that mimics a share market in which users can trade their virtual tokens for bandwidth and vice versa. We also describe the prototype developed for the Android phones.