Robust scalable video multicast using triangular network coding in LTE/LTE-Advanced

The recent research studies showed that inter-layered network coding is a promising approach to provide the unequal error protection for scalable video multicast under the channel heterogeneity. The selection of the optimal transmission distribution performed at eNB increases the system performance with the cost of time and computational complexities. In this paper, we propose an optimal transmission strategy for the scalable video multicast using triangular network coding at the application layer in LTE/LTE-Advanced networks. The proposed transmission strategy comprises of two optimization phases: space reduction and performance maximization. The first optimization reduces the number of searching steps in the dictionary of possible transmission distributions by using a proposed performance predictive algorithm. The following optimization not only maximizes the average number of successfully decoded layers among receivers but also maximizes the number of receivers decoding the video base layer successfully in the second phase. We evaluate the proposed transmission strategy through various simulations with the performance metrics regarding the average number of successfully decoded layers among receivers in a multicast group, throughput, and video quality measurement. The simulation results show that our proposed scheme outperforms other recent studies and adapts well with the variable streaming rates of the video under the extreme time constraints.