Concurrent Multipath Transmission with Forward Error Correction Mechanism for Video Streaming in Wireless Networks

Abstract

Concurrent multipath transmission has been used in wireless networks in order to improve the performance of end-to-end transmission. However, the lost packets limit video quality. Hence, a Forward Error Correction (FEC) mechanism has been proposed to recover lost packets. Previous research didn't select an appropriate transmission rate or FEC redundancy on each path. Hence, congestion packet losses became critical when the available bandwidth wasn't enough on some paths. In order to solve this problem, we propose Concurrent Multipath Transmission with FEC (CMT-FEC) mechanism involving a mathematical analytical model with which the appropriate transmission rate and FEC redundancy on each path in a multipath environment can be determined. Hence, the CMT-FEC mechanism doesn't cause the self-induced congestion effect to impede the timely recovery of video information. The experimental results obtained show that the CMT-FEC mechanism has better performance in terms of effective packet loss rate and peak signal to noise ratio than conventional concurrent multipath FEC mechanisms.