Enhancing video viewing-experience in opportunistic networks based on SVC, an experimental study

Opportunistic networks are generally characterized by a low performance due to user mobility and non end-to-end communications, which makes it challenging to use them in scenarios involving the transmission of large data, such as video transmission. This article presents simulated experiments of transmitting different video sequences in opportunistic networks, with the goal of enhancing user video viewing experience. We consider this subjective concept objectively as a trade-off between playout delay and the delivered quality level. To obtain the best trade-off, we propose using Scalable Video Coding, which divides a video into multiple unequally important layers, providing different levels of quality. This property is exploited to transmit video layers with unequal degrees of redundancy proportionally to their degree of importance. Experimental results show that this approach enables the video to become more quickly playable at the destination with a low starting quality but progressively being enhanced, providing a better viewing-experience.