Energy-efficient video streaming from high-speed trains

The problem of streaming packetized media has been intensively studied for a long time. In this paper, we revisit this problem in the high-speed railway context, where passengers encode and upload videos through increasingly powerful smartphones. The challenge is highlighted by the fast changing channel conditions in high-speed trains and the limited battery of cell phones. Inspired by the unique spatial-temporal characteristics of wireless signals along high-speed railways, we propose a novel energy-efficient and rate-distortion optimized approach for video streaming. Our solution effectively predicts the signal strength through its spatial-temporal periodicity in this new application scenario. It then smartly adjusts the GOF budget, schedules the video transmission to achieve graceful rate-distortion performance and yet conserves the energy consumption. Performance evaluation based on simulated railway scenarios and H.264 video traces demonstrates the effectiveness of our solution and its superiority as compared to existing solutions.