Packet Padding for Real-Time Streaming Media Transmission

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Solution Overview

Problem

In real-time streaming data transmission, such as audio and video, existing methods increase final transmission delay due to packet reordering, which requires receivers to store packets and delay decoding.

Innovation Solution

A transmitter terminal pads packets to a specific length based on requests from the receiver terminal to prevent reordering, and a receiver terminal analyzes reordering conditions to request padding, allowing for immediate decoding without packet storage.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Quantity of substance

If link trunking is used to increase bandwidth, then network capacity is improved, but packet reordering occurs causing increased transmission delay

Engineering Contradiction:

ImprovebandwidthVSAvoidtransmission delay

Core Design Contradiction:

Quantity of substanceVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The transmitter performs preliminary padding on packets before transmission to ensure uniform packet lengths. This preliminary action prevents reordering issues that would otherwise require receiver-side buffering and sorting, thereby reducing transmission delay while maintaining the bandwidth benefits of link trunking.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

Padding data acts as an intermediary element that standardizes packet lengths without affecting the original audio/video content. This intermediary mechanism ensures that packets traverse multiple links in link trunking without causing reordering delays at the receiver.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Reliability

If packets are stored and sorted at the receiver to correct reordering, then packet delivery accuracy is improved, but final transmission delay increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvepacket delivery accuracyVSAvoidfinal transmission delay

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The invention converts the potential harm of variable packet lengths causing reordering into a benefit by systematically padding all packets to a uniform length. This transforms the reordering problem into a solved state before transmission, eliminating the need for delay-inducing sorting operations at the receiver.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #22Blessing in disguise (Convert harm into benefit)

3Productivity

If variable length packets are transmitted, then data efficiency is improved, but reordering occurs due to different processing times

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata efficiencyVSAvoidreordering delay

Core Design Contradiction:

ProductivityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The invention changes the length parameter of all packets to a uniform value through padding, while maintaining the efficiency of the underlying variable-length encoding. This parameter standardization eliminates reordering caused by differential processing times across multiple encryption/decryption hardware devices in link trunking configurations.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

Data Source

PatentUS8711695B2Transmitter and receiver for streaming media including packet padding

Publication Date: 2014.04.29 PANASONIC HOLDINGS CORP

AI summary

A problem of the invention is to provide a transmitter terminal and a receiver terminal that can realize transmission of a real-time stream as the final transmission delay time is shortened by avoiding occurrence of reorder. In a transmitter terminal (1), a padding request accepting section (103) receives a padding request packet transmitted from a receiver terminal (2) and a packet padding section (102) pads the packet generated in a data generating section (101) so that the packet length becomes a specific length or more based on a command from the padding request accepting section (103), and transmits the packet to a network (10). In the receiver terminal (2), a reorder condition analyzing section (201) receives a packet from the network (10) and analyzes the occurrence condition of reorder of the packet, a padding requesting section (204) generates a padding request packet for requesting the transmitter terminal (1) to execute padding based on the analysis result of the reorder condition analyzing section (201), and a data reproducing section (203) reproduces the packet received in the reorder condition analyzing section (201).