Concurrent multipath transmission provides an effective solution for streaming high-quality mobile videos in heterogeneous wireless networks. Rate control is commonly adopted in multimedia communication systems to fully utilize the available network bandwidth. This paper proposes a novel rate control for concurrent multipath video transmission. The existing rate control algorithms mainly adapt bit rate in the short-term pattern, i.e., without considering the long-term video transmission quality. We propose a long-term rate control scheme that takes into account the status of both the transmission buffer and video frames. First, a mathematical model is developed to formulate the non-convex problem of long-term quality maximization. Second, we develop a dynamic programming solution for online encoding bit rate control based on buffer status. The performance evaluation is conducted in a real test bed over LTE and Wi-Fi networks. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed long-term rate control scheme achieves appreciable improvements over the short-term rate control schemes in terms of video quality and delay performance.

并发多径传输为异构无线网络中的高质量移动视频流传输提供了有效的解决方案。速率控制通常在多媒体通信系统中采用，以充分利用可用的网络带宽。本文提出了一种新颖的并发多路径视频传输速率控制。现有的速率控制算法主要在短期模式中适应比特率，即不考虑长期视频传输质量。我们提出了一种长期速率控制方案，该方案考虑了传输缓冲区和视频帧的状态。首先，建立一个数学模型来表达长期质量最大化的非凸问题。其次，我们开发了一种基于缓冲区状态的在线编码比特率控制的动态编程解决方案。性能评估是在LTE和Wi-Fi网络上的真实测试台上进行的。实验结果表明，所提出的长期速率控制方案在视频质量和延迟性能方面比短期速率控制方案有了明显的提高。