A Multiple Description Coding Approach for Overlay Multipath Video Streaming Based on QoE Evaluations

Abstract

With the rapid development of video streaming era, multipath video streaming comes as a promising solution. However, dividing the video into different sub-streams is still considered as an important challenge for researchers. In this paper, we propose an approach for generating multiple complementary descriptions of the video flow, then to couple these descriptions with the path diversity provided by overlay video distribution networks (VDN). We select our overlay paths based on available bandwidth estimation. Furthermore, we use a hybrid assessment tool called PSQA for evaluating the quality of experience (QoE) over the recipient. Results show the automatic adaptability of our method with the load variation on different Internet paths. They also show the advantages of using Multiple Description Coding (MDC) video streaming, against the traditional multi-streams splitting strategies, especially in overloaded environments. Moreover, results show that MDC video streaming is more efficient in term of economizing on bandwidth over Internet paths.