Distributed Rate Allocation Algorithms in the Emergency Communication over Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the video stream distributed transmission problem for the emergency communication over heterogeneous wireless networks. The key issue of the transmission problem is how to guarantee the quality of service, when the video stream is transmitted by multiple wireless access networks. According to observed available bit rate (ABR) and round trip time (RTT) over each access network, we propose four distributed rate allocation algorithms with different optimization objectives, in term of the average packet loss rate, the maximum delay, the proportional fairness and the benefit fairness of networks. Simulation results show that these four proposed algorithms can perform well both in fairness and effectiveness. Furthermore, the video distortion minimization algorithm and the maximum delay minimization algorithm tend to be more practical since the video quality is important in the emergency communication.