Adaptive bandwidth allocation based on playback tunnel to support video ondemand service over ATM networks

This paper focuses on adaptive bandwidth allocation (ABA) for transporting pre-stored VBR compressed video data across networks in support of video-on -demand (VoD) service. Two key issues are addressed. Firstly, a simplified dynamic programming method based; on playback tunnel is proposed to predict the bandwidth which can be dynamically allocated for transporting video se gment to guarantee that the playback buffer neither underflows nor overflow s. Secondly, ABA schemes with different criteria including middle-tunnel AB A (MT-ABA) and reduced-bandwidth-variability ABA (RBV-ABA) are investigated . The proposed ABA schemes are evaluated by a set of real-life MPEG video t races. The obtained results show that the RBV-ABA scheme outperforms MT-ABA scheme in terms of peak rate, traffic burstiness and bandwidth variability . On the other hand, the MT-ABA scheme is more significant for avoiding the playback buffer overflow or underflow than that of RBV-ABA. (C) 2001 Elsev ier Science B.V. All rights reserved.