Video quality assurance for SVC in peer-to-peer streaming

The Scalable Video Coding (SVC) has begun to arouse interest as a considerable alternative when streaming compressed video over wireless link. The main advantage of SVC comes with the scalability: one encoded sequence can contain multiple decodable sub-streams that allow adaptation to bandwidth fluctuation as well as terminal capabilities. Another growing phenomenon in video streaming is the utilization of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, which benefits from its reduced costs and load on servers. However, similarly as in non-P2P networks, packet losses and transmission errors are possible, which sets specific need for error resilience especially in the decoder in order to provide sufficient Quality of Experience (QoE). This paper focuses on SVC transmission in error-prone P2P networks and represents our quality assurance strategies focusing mainly to the error concealment for the SVC decoder. The paper also evaluates the effectiveness of the proposed method via simulation setup where the decoder receives incomplete SVC streams that simulate the packet losses in P2P network.