Efficient Frame Schedule Scheme for Real-time Video Transmission Across the Internet Using TCP

The great end-to-end delays are the major factor to influence the visual quality of real-time video across the Internet using TCP as transport layer protocol. In this paper, we present a video frame schedule scheme for rate adaptive real-time video transmission over TCP. The scheme schedules video frames between the application layer sender-buffer, the TCP sender-buffer and TCP receiver-buffer and can regulate automaticlly the video frame rate and play out buffer delays according to the network congestion level. The sheme requires only an extra buffer of application layer and can significantly cut down the end-to-end delays of real-time video without any modification to the network infrastructure or TCP protocol stack. The performance of the proposed solution is evaluated through extensive simulations using the NS-2 simulator.