Integrated Resource Allocation for Real–Time Video Transfer to Maximize User’s Utility
Kentarou Fukuda, Naoki Wakamiya, Masayuki Murata · 2000
For providing distributed multimedia applications with end–to–end QoS (Quality of Service) guarantees, resource–reservation based control mechanisms should be employed in both of networks and end–systems. Resource reservation within the network can be achieved by virtue of bandwidth allocation mechanisms of Internet RSVP or ATM, and the CPU resource on the end system can be reserved by real– time OS. To achieve an effective use of resources while providing high quality video transfer, both resources of the network and server CPU should be allocated to clients in an integrated manner. We first summarize the relationships among the video quality and the required amounts of CPU and network resources to provide a real–time video presentation. We find that high video quality can be kept by increasing network bandwidth even if CPU resources are not fully available. The opposite is also true. Based on these relationships, we next propose a new resource allocation scheme to share resources fairly among users by solving the utility maximization problem. In this paper, the utility is defined as functions of the user’s benefit (video quality) obtained through allocated resources and cost paid for them. By solving the problem as an optimization problem, our scheme offers the adequate resource allocation based on their availabilities.