Quality-Aware Energy Optimization in Wireless Video Communication With Multipath TCP

Abstract

The advancements in wireless communication technologies prompt the bandwidth aggregation for mobile video delivery over heterogeneous access networks. Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is the transport protocol recommended by IETF for concurrent data transmission to multihomed terminals. However, it still remains challenging to deliver user-satisfied video services with the existing MPTCP schemes because of the contradiction between energy consumption and received video quality in mobile devices. To enable the energy-efficient and quality-guaranteed video streaming, this paper presents an energy-distortion-aware MPTCP (EDAM) solution. First, we develop an analytical framework to characterize the energy-distortion tradeoff for multipath video transmission over heterogeneous wireless networks. Second, we propose a video flow rate allocation algorithm to minimize the energy consumption while achieving target video quality based on utility maximization theory. The performance of the proposed EDAM is evaluated through both experiments in real wireless networks and extensive emulations in exata. Experimental results show that EDAM exhibits performance advantages over existing MPTCP schemes in energy conservation and video quality.