Rate-distortion optimized media streaming with adaptive rate control

Communication over a network bottleneck link is a commonplace in the Internet today. The loss and delay experienced by packets travelling along the network path between the sender and the receiver are mainly governed by the characteristics of the bottleneck link, such as available data rate and queue size. In this work, we propose a framework for rate-distortion optimized packet scheduling with adaptive rate control for media streaming over network bottleneck links. The framework computes optimal packet schedules, while adaptively controlling its data rate as a response to the effect that its transmitted packets will have on the delay experienced on the link. This results into a closed-loop control system which dynamically adjusts its packet schedules according to its transmission rate. Experimental results demonstrate that our framework maintains significantly smaller packet delay and smoother transmission rate when streaming over a bottleneck link relative to rate-distortion optimized packet scheduling without rate control with only a minor loss in rate-distortion performance.