Mobile Live Video Upstreaming

We design and build a system we call mobiLivUp, that utilizes nearby smartphones to improve live wide-area video upstreaming. In mobiLivUp, to distribute the video to nearby devices, the video streaming device creates a small wireless network using Wi-Fi Direct. Other devices then connect to this network. Parts of the video stream are sent to these connected devices, which then upload their parts to a location in the wide-area network using their cellular connections. We develop algorithms and methods to effectively distribute video data to nearby nodes and for incentivizing cooperation from these nodes. We test our system through trace-driven simulation and implementation in various settings. Our experiments show that, in general, mobiLivUp increases the aggregate video throughput, depending on the number of nodes forwarding data and their data rates.