Content Aware Optimization for Video Delivery over WCDMA

A content-aware networking framework for transmitting video on the uplink of a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) cellular network is studied in this article. We consider a multi-user scenario and exploit the underlying structure of the video content to optimally schedule frames in order to minimize the total distortion of video quality across all users. In particular, we propose a novel Content-Aware Distortion Fair (CADF) scheme that determines, between multiple flows, the best set of frames to schedule using optimal transmit power, while meeting interference and delay constraints. The optimization problem is considered on the time scale of a single Group of Pictures, and is formulated as a restricted Multiple Knapsack Problem. A key contribution of this study is evaluating the CADF scheme on a Qualcomm 3G emulator, called “High data rate System Emulator 2” (HSE 2), and conducting rate control experiments with different types of emulated channel conditions. Our experimental results show that the CADF scheme significantly reduces video distortion, compared to the existing Foschini-Miljanic closed-loop distributed power control algorithm implemented on the WCDMA uplink. In the Appendix section, we also use the emulator to analyze the Traffic-to-Pilot resource allocation algorithm implemented on the reverse link of Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) Revision-A by profiling over different traffic classes.