Optimal bandwidth allocation scheme with delay awareness in multimedia transmission

Recently, efficient network resource management and quality-of-service (QoS) guarantee become more and more important for multimedia applications and services, especially when considering network delays. In this paper, an optimal bandwidth allocation scheme that achieves maximal utilization of the client buffer and minimal allocation of bandwidth for each client is introduced. The proposed scheme allocates bandwidth to multiple clients requesting services from a server by adjusting the transmission rates based on the client buffer occupancy, the playback requirements of the individual client and the network delays. Simulations for the single client and multiple client scenarios are conducted under different network congestion levels. The simulation results show that our approach performs better in comparison with the fixed rate allocation approach and the rate by playback requirement approach since it avoids underflows and overflows efficiently and provides QoS for more clients with the limited available bandwidth in the network.