Efficient Seamless Channel Transition for Near Video-on-Demand with Small Receiving Bandwidth

摘要

Data broadcasting is a cost-effective solution for large-scale distribution of popular videos, and this approach can guarantee constant worst playback latency for all clients. The video service based on the broadcasting technique is called the near video-on-demand (VoD) service. An essential broadcasting method is the seamless slotted generalized Fibonacci broadcasting (SSGFB) scheme, which can support small client-receiving bandwidth and adjust server-broadcasting channels according to video popularity. This scheme is also the best scheme for reducing client waiting time, when compared with other schemes supporting small receiving-bandwidth clients. Although SSGFB is a promising scheme for VoD services in heterogeneous environments, SSGFB incurs large bandwidth waste during channel transition. This study further finds that SSGFB has transition playback latency when performing channel addition. Therefore, an enhanced SSGFB (ESSGFB) is proposed to alleviate these performance issues caused by channel transition. This novel scheme is applied and verified, and an analytical evaluation is provided to demonstrate its performance advantage. The ESSGFB scheme reduces bandwidth waste and transition playback latency considerably under various parameter settings, when compared with SSGFB.