PCTO: An Easily-Configured Enhancement Scheme for Real-Time Communication over 5G Network

In the real-time communication service over fifth-generation (5G) wireless network, e.g., FaceTime video call, the data packet loss and jitter, which increase the end-to-end packet delay and result in video stuck or glitching, influence the quality of experience (QoE) severely. In order to reduce packet delay and loss, an easily-configured enhancement scheme, called packet-level coding transmission optimization (PCTO), is proposed for user equipment, e.g., smart phone. In the proposed scheme, the data packets are firstly encoded by packet-level coding (PC) module in which some redundant packets are generated. Secondly, we differentiate the transmission priority for each packet by transmission optimization (TO) module, in which two principles are enforced. The first principle is that the transmission priority of data packet is higher than the redundant packet in order to overcome congestion cycle. The second principle is that the remaining uplink resource is allocated to code blocks uniformly. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme reduces 80% packet loss and 22% average delay at least and mean opinion score (MOS) can be improved by 33%. It can also be well adapted to different network conditions compared with existing schemes. Furthermore, the proposed scheme is compatible with the existing 5G standard. The procedures for configuring PCTO for an existing 5G network are also presented.