Bandwidth Aggregation with Path Interleaving Forward Error Correction Mechanism for Delay-Sensitive Video Streaming in Wireless Multipath Environments

Multipath transmission which uses multiple paths for data transfer has been used in wireless networks to improve the performance of end-to-end transmission. However, wireless networks suffer from high packet loss rate, variations in end-to-end delay and available bandwidth. Hence, the Forward Error Correction (FEC) mechanism has been proposed to recover lost packets by adapting to the changing conditions in the network. Legacy multipath transmission with the FEC mechanism is used not only to improve the transmission performance by relying on bandwidth aggregation but also to reduce packet losses by relying on path selection. However, bandwidth aggregation of legacy multipath transmission with the FEC mechanism cannot select the appropriate transmission rate on each path as this needs more FEC redundancy to protect lost packets. Moreover, because the larger end-to-end delay leads to the video frame not being playable on-time at the receiver end, legacy multipath transmission with the FEC mechanism cannot be used in delay-sensitive video streaming when the FEC block length is so long that may exceed the end-to-end delay. This paper proposes the Bandwidth Aggregation with Path Interleaving FEC (BAPI-FEC) mechanism for delay-sensitive video streaming in a wireless multipath environment. The BAPI-FEC mechanism involves a mathematical analytical model with which the appropriate transmission rate, FEC block length and FEC redundancy on each path in a wireless multipath environment can be determined. Moreover, in order to overcome the burst packet loss problem, the BAPI-FEC mechanism relies on path interleaving technology to disperse burst packet losses to different FEC blocks.