Proactive Bit Rate Reduction for Streaming Media in Wireless Networks
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Solution Overview
Problem
In cellular wireless networks, when a user equipment (UE) experiences a reduction in coverage throughput during a streaming media session, the serving access node may struggle to transmit media content quickly enough, leading to buffer overruns, dropped packets, and user experience issues due to the inability to handle the higher bit rate media stream over lower throughput connections.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves predicting a coverage-throughput reduction and proactively increasing the Quality of Service (QoS) level of the bearer or transcoding the media content to a lower bit rate before the UE transitions to reduced-throughput coverage, ensuring timely and successful media content transmission by prioritizing air-interface resources or reducing data volume.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the access node transmits media content at high bit rate, then the user experience is improved, but the transmission fails when coverage throughput is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by predicting coverage-throughput reduction before it actually occurs. The access node monitors coverage conditions and proactively identifies when a UE is likely to experience reduced throughput, allowing the system to prepare bit rate adjustment in advance rather than reacting after the problem occurs, thus maintaining transmission reliability while preserving high bit rate performance when coverage is good
2Reliability
If the bit rate is reduced in response to coverage degradation, then transmission reliability is maintained, but user experience deteriorates due to buffer overruns and dropped packets
Solution Approach 1:
The system reduces bit rate in advance based on prediction of upcoming coverage degradation, rather than waiting for actual throughput reduction to occur. This proactive approach prevents buffer overruns and packet drops before they happen, maintaining both reliability and productivity by smoothing the transition rather than creating abrupt degradation
Solution Approach 2:
The access node continuously monitors coverage conditions and uses this feedback to predict future throughput changes. By analyzing current coverage trends, the system can anticipate when throughput will drop and adjust bit rate accordingly, creating a closed-loop control system that maintains optimal performance while preventing transmission failures
Data Source
AI summary
A method and system for proactively reconfiguring communication to a user equipment device (UE) in anticipation the UE experiencing a coverage-throughput reduction when the UE is receiving streaming media. An example method includes (i) predicting, when the UE is receiving streaming media from a media server, that the UE is going to experience the coverage-throughput reduction and (ii) based at least in part on the predicting, proactively initiating transcoding of the streaming media to reduce a bit rate of the streaming media en route to the UE in a communication path between the media server and the UE, the initiating occurring before the UE experiences the coverage-throughput reduction so that the bit rate of the streaming media is reduced by when the UE experiences the coverage-throughput reduction.