Minimizing Rate Distortion in Peer-to-Peer Video Streaming

This paper addresses the problem of optimal rate allocation for video stream in peer-to-peer networks. The authors present a distributed rate allocation algorithm with the goal of minimizing the total video distortion among peers receiving the same video. The scheme assumes that video streams can be transcoded/requantized at intermediate peers. The authors deploy a double pricing solution that simultaneously incorporates the network and the relay constraints in the peer-to-peer network and compare it with a single pricing solution where the relay constraint is applied only after all the communicating peers converge to optimality.