An Efficient and Fair Substream Allocation Method for a Distributed Video Streaming System using Multiple Substreams

In a distributed streaming system using an advanced coding scheme that encodes a video into multiple substreams, the capacity of the system depends on the amount of contribution of participating peers. Thus, an incentive mechanism for peers to contribute voluntarily is needed to increase system capacity. In addition, since peers are not only a provider but also a consumer in the system (i.e. prosumer), the overall capacity of the system must be allocated fairly among the peers while it must be allocated in a way that can maximize the net quality of experience of peers to increase system efficiency. In this paper, we propose a substream allocation method to solve the problems taking an optimization approach. Unlike the other optimization approaches, the proposed method is verified quantitatively in a simulation study that it can use the capacity of video streaming system efficiently while allocating fair amount of substreams among peers because it considers explicitly the prosumer characteristics of peers.