A Smoothing Algorithm for Time Slicing DVB-H Video Transmission with Bandwidth Constraints

DVB-H transmission is assuming an ever growing importance for multimedia data delivery to hand-held terminals of reduced size and limited battery capacities. To minimize terminals power consumption, DVB-H systems adopt a time sliced transmission in bursts. In such a context, in this paper a new smoothing algorithm, the Smoothing Algorithm of the Burst (SAB), suitable for the transmission of multimedia streams with high bit rate variability, has been proposed and analyzed. Such an algorithm takes into account receiving buffer size, burst size and available bandwidth variability to reschedule data transmission, with the target to minimize the percentage of loss due to bandwidth and buffer limitations. Numerical results obtained by simulation show the improved performance of SAB compared with the usual unsmoothed data transmission in bursts. SAB can thus be utilized to transmit video streams with higher bit rate and better quality than actually considered in DVB-H systems.