Efficient path aggregation and error control for video streaming

This paper presents an efficient multiplexing and error control system to improve streaming video performance over path aggregates. While providing the application with increased aggregate bandwidth, the scheme reduces performance degradation due to high path latencies and loss rates. The reduction in effective loss and delay is achieved by smart multiplexing and exploiting the high latency paths to the user's advantage. A novel out-of-order transmission algorithm utilizes the higher latency paths to transfer suitable frames from within the transmit buffer. We present an FEC strategy for our scheme that decouples the transmission of error correction frames from the associated data. This provides protection against correlated losses. Our scheme, while not completely optimized, can provide close to optimal performance at a considerably lower complexity. We verify the performance of our scheme using the ns-2 simulator.