Real-time multipath multimedia traffic in cellular networks for command and control applications

Bacco F. M., Cassarà P., Gotta A., Pellegrini V.

Multipath  UAV  Smart cities  Command and control  Video quality  PSNR  SSIM 

This work describes a real testbed for enabling Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)-to-ground real-time video streaming. The aim is in providing a video feed to the pilot on the ground for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLoS) operations exploiting cellular networks in urban/suburban areas. Towards this aim, multipath communications are used in a multi-operator setup to counteract the intermittent network coverage in urban and suburban ares. The main requirements are: low latency, and a continuous video stream of reasonable quality. We rely on both upper-layer Forward Error Correction (FEC) techniques and link diversity, so to increase the probability of a fluid video playback with acceptable quality. We report per-link statistics, collected during field trials, of three different cellular operators, to analyse the impact of using a set of physical links as a single logical one on a RTP-based video streaming. In our tests, such a setup has provided a good level of performance.