Towards High Precision End-to-End Video Streaming from Drones using Packet Trimming

The emergence of a number of network communication facilities such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN), the Internet of Things (IoT), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and in-network packet processing, holds a potential to meet the low latency, high precision requirements of various future multimedia applications. However, this raises the corresponding issues of how all of these elements can be used together in future networking environments, including newly developed protocols and techniques. This paper describes the architecture of an end-to-end video streaming platform for video surveillance, consisting of a UAV network domain, an edge server implementing in-network packet trimming operations with the use of Big Packet Protocol (BPP), utilization of Scalable Video Coding (SVC) and multiple video clients which connect to a network managed by an SDN controller. A Virtualized Edge Function at the drone edge utilizes SVC and in communication with the Drone Control Unit to manage the transmitted video quality. Experimental results show the potential that future multimedia applications can achieve the required high precision with the use of future network components and the consideration of their interactions.