Efficient adaptive media scaling and streaming of layered multimedia in heterogeneous environment

Abstract

The fast increasing network connectivities to a wider range of end-users and cheaper and diverse end-user devices further exacerbate the need for adaptive and scalable streaming solutions. Motivated by these streaming requirements, we introduce the notion of a layered multimedia presentation and outline a framework for the media scaling and streaming of such presentations across heterogeneous networks to different end-user devices. Layered multimedia is designed to handle heterogeneous and fluctuating resource conditions by trading-off the presentation quality. Based on the results of streaming buffer effects, an efficient on-demand media scaling technique is devised to deliver the highest quality presentation to the end-users, according to their specific network bandwidth and device constraints. Once a presentation is selected, an associated on-the-fly transmission scheduling and streaming technique is used for the streaming of multimedia with high efficiency. Efficient media scaling and streaming reduce startup and quality switch delays and facilitates scalable media server design under heavy loads.