Two-Level Scheduling for Video Transmission over Downlink OFDMA Networks

PLoS One. 2016 Feb 23;11(2):e0148625. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148625. eCollection 2016.

Abstract

This paper presents a two-level scheduling scheme for video transmission over downlink orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) networks. It aims to maximize the aggregate quality of the video users subject to the playback delay and resource constraints, by exploiting the multiuser diversity and the video characteristics. The upper level schedules the transmission of video packets among multiple users based on an overall target bit-error-rate (BER), the importance level of packet and resource consumption efficiency factor. Instead, the lower level renders unequal error protection (UEP) in terms of target BER among the scheduled packets by solving a weighted sum distortion minimization problem, where each user weight reflects the total importance level of the packets that has been scheduled for that user. Frequency-selective power is then water-filled over all the assigned subcarriers in order to leverage the potential channel coding gain. Realistic simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art scheduling scheme by up to 6.8 dB in terms of peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR). Further test evaluates the suitability of equal power allocation which is the common assumption in the literature.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Computer Communication Networks*
  • Data Compression
  • Signal-To-Noise Ratio
  • Video Recording*

Grants and funding

This project is supported by the University of Malaya, Malaysia, under UMRG grant (RG064/11ICT), and MIMOS Berhad. The funder MIMOS Berhad provided support in the form of salaries for authors MLT and NR, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.