Enhancing video delivery in the LTE wireless access using cross-layer mechanisms

The current evolution of the global Internet data traffic shows an increasing demand of video transmissions, which potentially leads to the saturation of mobile networks. To cope with this issue, this paper describes techniques to handle the video traffic load in the last hop, of the communication network, i.e., the wireless access. The general idea is to benefit from a cross-layer architecture for efficient video transport, where multiple wireless access technologies, represented by Wi-Fi and next generation cellular technologies (4G and beyond), interact with the upper layers through an abstract interface. This architecture enables the introduction of enhancements in the LTE-A wireless access: evolved Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (eMBMS) extended with dynamic groupcast communications, video relay at the Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) level and a smart video frame dropping mechanism to provide mobile users with a satisfactory level of Quality of Experience (QoE). These video-aware mechanisms leverage the abstract interface and allow mobile operators to fine-tune their networks while coping with the upcoming mobile video traffic increase.