Simple VBR Harmonic Broadcasting (SVHB)

Abstract

One way to broadcast a popular video is to partition the video into segments, which are broadcasted on several streams periodically. The approach lets multiple users share streams; thus, the stress on the scarce bandwidth can be alleviated without sacrificing viewers’ waiting time. One representative approach is the Harmonic Broadcasting (HB) scheme, which can broadcast a video using multiple streams by having new viewers wait no longer than ( ) N θ L time, where L is the length of a video, and N is the number of segments. In comparison with other segmented schemes, the HB scheme requires minimum bandwidth. However, the scheme mainly supports transmission of CBR-encoded videos. In this paper, we propose a simple VBR harmonic broadcasting (SVHB) scheme for VBR-encoded videos. Unlike the HB scheme, the SVHB scheme guarantees continuous playout. Additionally, the scheme improves the variable bandwidth harmonic broadcasting (VBHB) scheme in bandwidth consumption, maximum buffer requirements, and maximum required disk transfer rate. Some bounds on the bandwidth consumption, the buffer requirements, and the required disk transfer rate are also developed.