A wireless video transmission control approach through Stochastic Dynamic Programming

This paper presents an intelligent, rate-limited multicast video transmission optimization scheme for video distribution over 802.11 wireless networks based on packet retransmissions. We propose a problem formulation which involves the characteristics of the encoded stream together with the behaviour of the wireless channel. Using standard Stochastic Dynamic Programming techniques, optimal control policies are obtained off-line. These policies are optimal in the sense of minimizing the expected distortion at the terminal. In addition, the on-line complexity or our approach is very low since the optimization problem is solved off-line. The performance of our scheme has been evaluated in a real scenario and compared with that of a limited rate ARQ algorithm. The results for our proposed system show a higher packet recovery rate and a better protection of information with a higher priority.