A path-aware scheduler for Air-to-ground multipath multimedia delivery in real time

The use of multipath techniques in transmission has emerged in the last years thanks to their potential in increasing throughput. They can also be used as a means to counteract errors or losses in transmission, thus increasing reliability. In this work, we focus on the challenging scenario of real-time video streaming from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) via multiple wireless channels. We propose a lightweight scheduler capable of dynamically selecting the paths to be used and of determining the necessary redundancy rate to protect the multimedia flow. Our scheduler, implemented as a module of the GStreamer framework, can be used in real or simulated settings. The results we present show that the proposed scheduler can be used to target a very low loss rate by dynamically adapt to varying channel conditions in terms of losses and experienced delay.