Bitrate Adaptation Flow Control and Client-Based Congestion Control for Multimedia-on-Demand

摘要

A flow control for streaming multimedia data using UDP over IP network is presented. The bitrate adaptation algorithm embedded in the protocol is considered to be an end-to-end mechanism in application level. The flow control system constantly maintains the buffer at a prescribed capacity, even with bursty network losses, by adapting the multimedia bitrate B at the streaming coder. A congestion control algorithm which is considered to be located in a lower level than the flow control mechanism is also presented. It works together with the presented flow control to resolve network congestion problems while maintaining a degree of TCP-friendliness by adapting the sending rate R of the server. Simulation results obtained from NS2 have shown better resource allocation can be obtained, and an overall increase in the average sending rate and hence better quality of streaming media is observed.