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July 12, 2013

VTT Develops Improved Video Delivery for Mobile Phones

Just like in days of old when the Internet was in its infancy and video content was being introduced, today's mobile video sometimes brings those frustrating memories of a spinning cursor until the content is available for viewing. Congested networks are having to deal with millions of users accessing rich content that devours bandwidth. In order to overcome this problem, operators are looking for solutions that exploit available infrastructure in order to deliver better services at competitive price points. The VTT (Valtion Teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus - State Technical Research Center) Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a solution for improving streaming video for mobile phones.

The new architecture from VTT allows service operators to capitalize on assets available to them with the diversity of heterogeneous networks for operational optimization of quality and efficiency. The cross-layer architecture provides functions with an enhancement for adaptive video streaming and mobility management. By using cross-layer video adaptation, congestion-triggered handovers, and concurrent utilization of multiple access networks in the video stream transport, it is able to support better quality of service video streaming.

The solution VTT provides is basically asset management. After gathering the information from the video application, the network and mobile phone, it uses the cross-layer optimization to collect and transmit the information to enhance the video streaming service in wireless networks.

End-to-end optimization can be achieved by taking a complete view of the application and mobility management and how it is adapted for a solution with a coordinated control of the two operations. Evaluating the resulting mobile video streaming system architecture and the cross-layer control algorithms using network simulation and prototypes can improve video streaming performance in heterogeneous wireless networks. Once the changes in the communication end-points and access networks are made, it will support gradual deployment, which allows service providers and operators the ability to choose only a subset of the proposed mechanism for implementation.

When it is fully implemented, consumers will have better-quality video that is easily accessible and operators will be able to provide the service without having to invest in new network infrastructure to increase capacity. The speed of the video transfer can be adjusted for more efficiency according to the available resources of the network. So when the network is congested and the transfer speed of the wireless network fluctuates, the quality of the video being streamed will continue to be acceptable to the user.

The user and operator also have options when choosing the network connectivity for video access. Users will be able to use networks with high or low quality with different price points, providing options for customers with limited budgets. For the operator, it creates a new service for customers willing to pay increased rates for higher quality service.




Edited by Ryan Sartor


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