The effect of block-wise feedback on the throughput-delay trade-off in streaming

Unlike traditional file transfer where only total delay matters, streaming applications impose delay constraints on each packet and require them to be in order. To achieve fast in-order packet decoding, we have to compromise on the throughput. We study this trade-off between throughput and in-order...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Joshi, Gauri, Kochman, Yuval, Wornell, Gregory W.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/91129
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7864-9705
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9166-4758
Description
Summary:Unlike traditional file transfer where only total delay matters, streaming applications impose delay constraints on each packet and require them to be in order. To achieve fast in-order packet decoding, we have to compromise on the throughput. We study this trade-off between throughput and in-order decoding delay, and in particular how it is affected by the frequency of block-wise feedback, whereby the source receives full channel state feedback at periodic intervals. Our analysis shows that for the same throughput, having more frequent feedback significantly reduces the in-order decoding delay. For any given block-wise feedback delay, we present a spectrum of coding schemes that span different throughput-delay tradeoffs. One can choose an appropriate coding scheme from these, depending upon the delay-sensitivity and bandwidth limitations of the application.