Improving QoS in mobile multimedia streaming with SCTP-PQ

Abstract

The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is often the preferred transport layer protocol in streaming applications. This protocol combines the best aspects of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP), but also offers additional features. SCTP supports multihoming and multi-streaming applications and has a congestion mechanism like TCP. Media streaming consists of different types of frames with different levels of importance. For example, I-frames carry more information than B-frames in Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). Usually, MPEG frames are processed using the First-In-First-Out (FIFO) algorithm. In this paper, a four-level priority queue integrated protocol named SCTP Priority Queue (SCTP-PQ) has been developed to reduce jitter and delay in real-time multimedia streaming for mobile devices. As part of the development, priority and retransmitted packets are determined on the sending side and these packets are processed faster by using the priority queue on the receiving side. In this way, the average queue delay of priority packets on the receiving side is reduced by 90 % and the throughput values are increased by an average of 10 times. The developed protocol has been extensively tested and compared with SCTP. The results show that the SCTP-PQ outperforms the standard SCTP in terms of jitter and delay.