The massive proliferation of wireless infrastructures with complementary
characteristics prompts the bandwidth aggregation for Concurrent Multipath
Transfer (CMT) over heterogeneous access networks. Stream Control Transmission
Protocol (SCTP) is the standard transport-layer solution to enable CMT in
multihomed communication environments. However, delivering high-quality
streaming video with the existing CMT solutions still remains problematic due
to the stringent QoS (Quality of Service) requirements and path asymmetry in
heterogeneous wireless networks. In this paper, we advance the state of the art
by introducing video distortion into the decision process of multipath data
transfer. The proposed Distortion-Aware Concurrent Multipath Transfer (CMT-DA)
solution includes three phases: 1) per-path status estimation and congestion
control; 2) quality-optimal video flow rate allocation; 3) delay and loss
controlled data retransmission. The term `flow rate allocation' indicates
dynamically picking appropriate access networks and assigning the transmission
rates. We analytically formulate the data distribution over multiple
communication paths to minimize the end-to-end video distortion and derive the
solution based on the utility maximization theory. The performance of the
proposed CMT-DA is evaluated through extensive semi-physical emulations in
Exata involving H.264 video streaming. Experimental results show that CMT-DA
outperforms the reference schemes in terms of video PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise
Ratio), goodput, and inter-packet delay.

本文提出了一种基于 Distortion-Aware Concurrent Multipath Transfer (CMT-DA) 的新型视频数据传输方案，包括三个阶段：路径状态估计与拥塞控制、质量最优视频流速率分配、延迟和丢失控制的数据重传。该方案在多个通信路径上分析数据分配以最小化端到端视频失真并提高 PSNR、goodput 和间包延迟。