Multi-interface Streaming of Scalable Video

Scalable Video Coding (SVC) creates new possibilities for video service delivery in heterogeneous multi-access networks as it allows splitting the video into independently streamable layers. Today’s terminal devices often have multiple network interfaces, and with multihoming and mobility capabilities the devices are able to use the interfaces also simultaneously for connecting to networked services. Thus for streaming SVC-encoded video, an interesting new use case is the ability to receive the same video stream over multiple network connections. Such multi-interface streaming capability would benefit situations where, for example, no single access network within the user’s reach is capable of supporting the whole video stream or when the service provider wants to make only the base quality stream available to all users (e.g. via DVB-H) but offers a quality enhancement for paying customers via some other connection (e.g. WLAN). In this paper, we present a prototype implementation for realizing multi-interface streaming for SVC.