On compensation technique in multimedia streaming system

Abstract

We describe a compensation method for real-time multimedia streaming to improve the user-perceived quality of video. Based on TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC), this method takes advantage of the resources available at the proxy server and considers the content-aware principle as well. Using feedback from the client, the proxy server dynamically drops or compensates the enhancement layers of the MPEG-4 stream. We optimize performance by carefully choosing the compensation point to maximize the compensation effect, while at the same time meeting the constraints of the client buffer and real-time requirements. Compared to the traditional prefetch method, the proposed method can further improve the video quality which is demonstrated through extensive simulations. © 2005 IEEE.