Autonomic QoS optimization of real-time internet audio using loss prediction and stochastic control

Quality of Internet audio is highly sensitive to packet loss caused by congestion in the links. Packet loss for audio is normally rectified by adding redundancy using forward error correction (FEC). Alternatively, path diversity mechanisms are used to improve reliability and thus session quality. To achieve optimized receiver audio quality for transmissions using single or multiple paths, we propose a self-adaptive joint error and rate control framework based on packet loss prediction and on-line quality assessment. The error control chooses proactive FEC to preserve quality with optimal bandwidth, using a Markov decision process (MDP) and a stochastic inventory control, a new approach for multimedia error recovery. The rate control uses a quality optimization model to determine the optimal dispersion over single or multiple paths. We present results using simulation and Internet experiments to show the superiority of our mechanism over other similar techniques.