Instantly decodable network coding for real-time scalable video broadcast over wireless networks

In this paper, we study real-time scalable video broadcast over wireless networks using instantly decodable network coding (IDNC). Such real-time scalable videos have hard deadline and impose a decoding order on the video layers. We first derive the upper bound on the probability that the individual completion times of all receivers meet the deadline. Using this probability, we design two prioritized IDNC algorithms, namely the expanding window IDNC (EW-IDNC) algorithm and the non-overlapping window IDNC (NOW-IDNC) algorithm. These algorithms provide a high level of protection to the most important video layer, namely the base layer, before considering additional video layers, namely the enhancement layers, in coding decisions. Moreover, in these algorithms, we select an appropriate packet combination over a given number of video layers so that these video layers are decoded by the maximum number of receivers before the deadline. We formulate this packet selection problem as a two-stage maximal clique selection problem over an IDNC graph. Simulation results over a real scalable video sequence show that our proposed EW-IDNC and NOW-IDNC algorithms improve the received video quality compared to the existing IDNC algorithms.