Hybrid FLUTE/DASH video delivery over mobile wireless networks

Abstract

This paper describes how FLUTE (File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) can be used to provide mobile video streaming services over broadcast wireless networks. FLUTE is a multicast protocol for multimedia file download. In this proposal, the protocol is adapted to provide video streaming services in crowded environments. Thus, video is delivered over a single connection to all viewers, reducing the traffic in the network. FLUTE incorporates an AL-FEC (Application Layered Forward Error Correction) mechanism in order to improve the reliability of the broadcast communication channel. For streaming applications, AL-FEC improves the relationship between the PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) of the received video and the bandwidth allocated to the broadcast connection. The AL-FEC hereby presented applies simple unequal error protection schemes to favor the download of key frames. Furthermore, the proposal is based on the same video segmentation mechanism as DASH and therefore, clients can connect to a DASH repository to repair errors in the segments. This paper shows that FLUTE and DASH can be seamlessly integrated into a hybrid broadcast/unicast streaming technology, providing flexibility to trade off PSNR and bandwidth depending on the conditions of the mobile network.