An Edge Service Architecture for Multimedia over Wireless Networks

In this paper, we describe the design and instantiation of a multimedia edge service architecture (MESA) for enhanced video transmission over wireless networks. MESA encompasses simple and novel rate-matching and shaping mechanisms as building blocks that ensure that the video rate matches the instantaneous available wireless channel capacity at fine timescales. Designing such a rate matching scheme as a service at the wired-wireless edge (transition point) enables three distinct advantages: it (1) achieves high accuracy leading to better video quality, (2) facilitates immediate deployment, and (3) enables a generic design applicable to several wireless technologies, with the augmentation of a few technology-specific mechanisms. We implement a MESA prototype and evaluate it on both WiMAX and WiFi testbeds using static and mobile client scenarios. Our results show that MESA selectively drops up to 5% low priority frames to improve the PSNR of video sessions significantly—by 7 dB on an average. By enabling a WiMAX-WiFi handover, we demonstrate that MESA adds negligible overhead to intraand inter-technology handovers.