MuVi: A Multicast Video Delivery Scheme for 4G Cellular Networks

Abstract

Although wireless broadband technologies have evolved signifi- cantly over the past decade, they are still insufficient to support the fast-growing mobile traffic, especially due to the increasing popu- larity of mobile video applications. Wireless multicast, aiming to exploit the wireless broadcast advantage, is a viable approach to bridge the gap between the limited wireless networking capacity and the ever-increasing mobile video traffic demand. In this work, we propose MuVi, a Multicast Video delivery sch- eme in OFDMA-based 4G wireless networks, to optimize multi- cast video traffic. MuVi differentiates video frames based on their importance in reconstructing the video and incorporates an effi- cient radio resource allocation algorithm to optimize the overall video quality across all users in the multicast group. MuVi is a lightweight solution with most of the implementation in the gate- way, slight modification in the base-station, and no modification at the clients. We implement MuVi on a WiMAX testbed and com- pare its performance to a Naive wireless multicast scheme that em- ploys the most robust MCS (Modulation and Coding Scheme), and an Adaptive scheme that employs the highest MCS supportable by all clients. Experimental results show that MuVi improves the av- erage video PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) by up to 13 and 7 dB compared to the Naive and the Adaptive schemes, respectively. MuVi does not require modification to the video encoding scheme or the air interface. Thus it allows speedy deployment in existing systems.