Optimal bandwidth-buffer trade-off for VBR media transmission over multiple relay-servers

Given a client buffer the minimum bandwidth required to transmit a pre-recorded VBR media can be computed in O(n) (n is the frame number). As n is usually very large, this resource management procedure is not suitable for online computation. We have proposed an O(nlogn) algorithm to characterize the bandwidth-buffer tradeoff for the optimal resource management. However, it cannot be applied to a general multimedia network with multiple relay-servers. In this paper, we extend our problem model to consider relay-servers. In each relay-server, an O(nlogn) algorithm is proposed to decide the optimal bandwidth-buffer trade-off. With these pre-computed tradeoff functions, an O(m) QoS control procedure is designed to allocate the suitable bandwidth for the available buffer, where m is the number of relay-servers in the assigned transmission path.