Adaptive video streaming over a mobile network with TCP-friendly rate control

This paper investigates the performance of TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC) to control the transmission rate of scalable video streams when used in a mobile network. The streams are encoded using the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension of the H.264/AVC standard. Adding or removing the layers is decided based on the TFRC during varying channel conditions of the mobile network. We conduct simulations in various realistic use cases, evaluate and compare the performance with and without TFRC-based adaptation. The results show significant improvements in terms of lower loss rate, delay, required buffer size and less playback interruption.