Optimised transmission of H.264 scalable video streams over multiple paths in mobile networks

Consumer demand for portable wireless devices such as smartphones or tablets capable of receiving high quality video content has risen sharply in recent years. This paper considers the real-time delivery of streamed H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) content to users of such devices within mobile networks (e.g. situations where they are part of a group moving together on a bus or a train). We propose a novel scheme for the multipath delivery of H.264 SVC content to users in multihomed mobile networks.By implementing our scheme on a realistic testbed, we show that it offers a significant improvement in received video quality over previously proposed alternative schemes.