Optimal bandwidth/delay tradeoff for feasible-region-based scalable multimedia scheduling

The feasible-region is a simple and optimal framework for scheduling the transmission of data with deadlines. We establish the fundamental relationship between the bandwidth requirement and the initial delay in feasible-region-based transmission scheduling. The relationship represents the optimal bandwidth/delay tradeoff. In the process, we identify the essential bandwidth, the exact bandwidth lower bound regardless of the initial delay. Efficient algorithms are given to calculate the essential bandwidth as well as the optimal bandwidth/delay tradeoff. The results extend the previous results on feasible-region-based scheduling, most of which were derived in the context of video traffic smoothing. When applied to the problem of scheduling scalable multimedia, we show that the feasible-region framework enables the integrated scheduling of presentation and transmission and is a new and promising approach of dealing with scalable multimedia. We establish the presentation feasibility condition and present some initial results on scheduling spatial scalability.