Joint control of multiplexing and traffic smoothing for multiple VER MPEG videos in live multimedia services

In live multimedia applications with multiple videos, it is necessary to develop an efficient mechanism of multiplexing several MPEG Video streams into a single stream and transmitting it over network without wasting excessive bandwidth. In this paper, we present an efficient multiplexing and traffic smoothing scheme for multiple variable bit rate (VBR) MPEG video streams in live video applications with finite buffer sizes. First, we describe the constraints imposed by the allowable delay bound for each elementary stream and by the multiplexer/receiver buffer sizes. Based on these constraints, a new multiplexing and traffic smoothing scheme is designed in such a way as to smooth maximally the multiplexed transmission rate by exploiting temporal and spatial averaging effects, while avoiding the buffer overflow and underflow. Through computer experiments based on an MPEG-coded video trace of Star-wars, it is shown that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the peak rate, coefficient of variation, and effective bandwidth of the multiplexed transmission rate.