Robust Live Unicast Video Streaming with Rateless Codes

Abstract

We consider live unicast video streaming over a packet erasure channel. To protect the transmitted data, previous solutions use forward error correction (FEC), where the channel code rate is fixed in advance according to an estimation of the packet loss rate. However, these solutions are inefficient under dynamic and unpredictable channel conditions because of the mismatch between the estimated packet loss rate and the actual one.We introduce a new approach based on rateless codes and receiver feedback. For every source block, the sender keeps on transmitting the encoded symbols until it receives an acknowledgment from the receiver indicating that the block was decoded successfully. Within this framework, we provide an efficient algorithm to minimize bandwidth usage while ensuring successful decoding subject to an upper bound on the packet loss rate. Experimental results showed that compared to traditional fixed-rate FEC, our scheme provides significant bandwidth savings for the same playback quality.