Rate-distortion optimized bitstream switching for peer-to-peer live streaming

Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology provides a cost-effective and scalable way to distribute video data. However, high heterogeneity of the P2P network, which rises not only from heterogeneous link capacity between peers but also from dynamic variation of available bandwidth, brings forward great challenge to video streaming. To attack this problem, an adaptive scheme based on rate-distortion optimization (RDO) is proposed in this paper. While low complexity RDO based frame dropping is exploited to shape bitrate into available bandwidth in peers, the streamed bitstream is dynamically switched among multiple available versions in an RDO way by the streaming server. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme based on RDO achieves great gain in overall perceived quality over simple heuristic schemes.