Implementation and Evaluation of Cooperative
Video Streaming for Mobile Devices
Marwan Ramadan, Layla El Zein, and Zaher Dawy
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
American University of Beirut
Beirut, Lebanon
Email: {mjr03, lmz07, zd03}@aub.edu.lb
Abstract— A promising approach for power reduction in mo-
bile devices is peer-to-peer cooperation. In this paper, we present
a testbed system implementation to evaluate the performance
of an infrastructure controlled cooperative video streaming
architecture. A number of mobile devices in close proximity
are connected to the Internet through a wireless access point
and are all requesting the same video stream from a dedicated
server. Instead of sending the stream independently to each
device, the server distributes the video packets among the devices,
over a long-range wireless link using WLAN technology; the
devices then exchange the received packets among each other
over short-range wireless links using Bluetooth technology. The
implemented testbed is used to experimentally demonstrate the
power reduction gains in mobile devices and to derive an
analytical model that relates power consumption to various
design and system parameters.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Cooperation among mobile devices is expected to play
a central role in the evolution towards 4G [1]. Allowing
mobile devices to cooperate among each other via peer-to-peer
connections can lead to throughput enhancement, coverage
extension, and power reduction. Studies show that the most
power-consuming component in a mobile device is normally
its communication interface [2], [3]. The authors in [4]
demonstrate throughput gains by establishing a peer-to-peer
network architecture between end users of a mobile internet
community requesting services over a cellular network. In
[5], [6], different architectures are presented and evaluated
by allowing multihop communications among mobile nodes
in cellular networks in order to achieve coverage extension,
power reduction, throughput enhancement, or load balancing.
In [7], a novel cooperation architecture is proposed to reduce
power consumption among mobile devices during real-time
streaming. In this architecture, a number of wireless devices
interested in the same multicast service are distributed within
the coverage of a single wireless access point, reachable
through a long-range link. Each terminal is assumed to be able
to communicate with the other terminals over short-range links
with higher bit rate capability compared to the long-range link.
Based on the proposed cooperative approach, every terminal
receives a subset of the stream from the access point over the
long-range link and sends it to its peers over the short-range
links. An analytical study is presented based on typical values
for power consumption of mobile devices during different
states (idle, long-range reception, small-range transmission).
Results show promising opportunities to decrease the power
consumed by increasing the number of collaborative peers.
In this work, we present a system testbed implementation
for an infrastructure controlled peer-to-peer (P2P) network
architecture. We consider a cooperative P2P scenario in which
a server streams real-time video in a distributive fashion
among the peers which exchange the received packets over
short-range connections. Two main themes highlight the ben-
efits of the implemented cooperative video streaming testbed:
cooperation between mobile devices allowing for lower power
consumption thanks to the lower power demands of short-
range communication links between the peers, and a reduction
of traffic on the network’s side relieving the operator from
unicasting the same video stream to each device. Based
on the implemented setup, we obtain accurate experimental
measurement results to verify the anticipated benefits of such
a cooperative architecture. Moreover, we derive a new cus-
tomized theoretical model that relates the power consumed in
the mobile devices to various design and system parameters.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we discuss
the system design and compare it with a traditional system
pointing out the differences. Section III presents a detailed
technical description of the testbed implementation. Section IV
describes the power measurement setup and presents measure-
ment results. Section V presents an analysis of the obtained
measurement results in addition to an analytical-based study.
Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section VI.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
Offering real-time video streaming services over wireless
systems can be critical for end-users as well as for network
operators and service providers in terms of QoS, throughput,
fairness, load, and power consumption requirements. A typical
scenario would consist of a group of mobile devices connected
to the Internet via wireless links and requesting a video
stream from a dedicated online server. In a traditional setup,
the server either separately streams the complete video to
each requesting device or multicasts the video once to all
requesting devices. In both cases, the communication interface
of each mobile device remains active for the whole reception
duration, which depends on the length of the video stream.
This results in high power consumption due to the required
 Fig. 1. Cooperative video streaming scenario.
RF and baseband processing during data reception. In terms
of network throughput, a drawback of sending individual
video streams over the long-range link to the different mobile
devices is the redundant transmitted traffic. While multicasting
alleviates this drawback, it remains an expensive solution for
operators and might not be supported by some long-range
wireless technologies. It is worth noting that multicasting
results in the same incoming traffic at mobile devices and,
thus, does not have an impact on power consumption at the
communication interface during video reception.
In this work, we assume the establishment of a P2P network
between the mobile devices over short-range wireless links
that are more power-efficient than the long-range wireless link.
In this scheme, each mobile device receives from the server
over the long-range wireless link only a subset of the total
data stream. If N devices are cooperating, then, each will be
receiving one of N subsets from the server. This reduces the
power consumed at the long-range communication interface by
a factor of N . Over the short-range wireless links, each device
receives the remaining data subsets from the other devices
in the P2P network. Being exchanged over a power-efficient
short-range wireless technology, the (N − 1) subsets require
lower reception power at the communication interface of the
devices. However, an additional overhead in this case is that
each mobile device needs to spend additional power to transmit
its received data subset to (N − 1) other devices. Therefore,
it is not directly clear whether the aggregate power consumed
at the mobile devices would be less or more when compared
to traditional video streaming architectures.
III. T ESTBED I MPLEMENTATION
To experimentally address this question, we implement a
prototype cooperative video streaming testbed as illustrated in
Figure 2. A server streams to the devices real-time video in a
distributive fashion over a long-range wireless link, which we
experimentally implement using WLAN technology. The peers
will exchange the received packets over short-range wireless
links which we experimentally implement using Bluetooth
technology. The aim is to verify whether using power-efficient
short-range links would achieve the expected gains in terms of
power reduction, and to anticipate the impact of short-range
throughput capability on performance. We conduct power
Fig. 2. Testbed implementation setup.
measurements on the mobile device batteries and use a data
acquisition system (DAQ) to analyze the results.
One of the testbed implementation milestones was to de-
velop the necessary algorithms for the cooperative network
architecture with the necessary intelligence at the server and
the mobile devices to fulfill their expected roles. The server has
to distribute the data among the devices while respecting real-
time constraints, and the devices must cooperate to exchange
and process data streams. This behavior is illustrated by the
packet sequence numbers in Figure 1.
A. Frame Distribution at the Server
We used the J2SE platform to develop the server application.
The server awaits for a certain number of clients N to
connect to it on the TCP socket then starts transmitting the
video frames in a round-robin fashion to the clients over
WLAN. The video format used is MJPEG where each MJPEG
frame is composed of a size header and a JPEG image.
Using MJPEG is motivated by the codec design simplicity
at the client side. The aim of this work is to evaluate the
power consumption of cooperative video streaming and not to
optimize the performance of the video codec. The frame size
and the transmission rate are controlled at the server input
parameters that include the number of clients, the packet size
(as in number of frames per packet), and the frame duration.
This enables the opportunity to adjust the video play speed at
the client and to ensure that WLAN and Bluetooth bit rates
are of the same order. From a performance perspective, this
would avoid overflowing of the buffer at the client side. Frames
buffered at the server are sent in UDP datagrams according to
the specified frame rate in a round-robin fashion to the clients.
A buffering algorithm is implemented at the clients in order
to reorder frames and reduce jitter.
B. Distributed Processing at the Clients
We implemented the client application on an HP iPAQ
Pocket PC using Visual C# with the .Net Compact Frame-
work 2. To implement the Bluetooth functionalities, we used
the Franson Bluetools library.
1) Establishment of the P2P Links: Devices must establish
connections between them over Bluetooth in order to be able
to cooperate. We have chosen to implement the simplest
Bluetooth topology, a single piconet, in which one device
initiates inquiries (the master) and the others listen (slaves) [8].
The establishment of the P2P network is threefold, and aims
at restricting the P2P network membership to those devices
that are interested in cooperation. The main stages include
advertisement, discovery, and initiation. Each client starts
by advertising a Bluetooth serial streaming service with a
particular identifier. The cooperative peers are identified by
the services they advertise. Each client intending to request the
video discovers the existing cooperative peers in the vicinity.
The first client to actually initiate a Bluetooth connection
with each peer becomes the master in the piconet and all the
subsequent P2P traffic will be routed through it. It is assumed
that clients stay connected throughout the streaming duration.
2) Data Exchange over the P2P Network: After the setup of
the P2P network over Bluetooth links, streaming of the video
can be initiated. Each client contacts the server through a TCP
socket and waits for incoming packets on a different UDP
socket. When all the other peers have contacted the server,
the latter starts its round-robin streaming which triggers the
reception of the UDP datagrams at the mobile devices. Each
packet received over WLAN from the server is then directly
sent to each connected peer over the Bluetooth links. Concur-
rently, packets over Bluetooth are also received in a separate
thread at the clients. Each received packet is depacketized and
passed to a reordering algorithm that either buffers or directly
displays the incoming frames according to certain quality of
service parameters to minimize delay and jitter.
3) Video Decoding at the Client: In order to enable MJPEG
video decoding at the clients, a special video player was
implemented. Each frame after buffering is depacketized into
a header and a JPEG image. The header contains the image
size which is used to read and display the JPEG frame in a
picture box on the client’s GUI. We used some of the graphical
capabilities of Windows Mobile, especially double-buffering,
to prevent flickering of the images. Double-buffering keeps the
present image displayed until the next one is loaded to avoid
blanks during the transition.
IV. P OWER M EASUREMENTS
Well known techniques are used to accurately measure the
energy consumption of a mobile device. A typical one consists
of powering up the device with its own battery and calculating
the static power drain by measuring the voltage drop across
a known resistor on the line between the battery and the
device [9]. The setup, shown in Figure 3, consists of one
mobile device (PDA) and an oscilloscope which we use to
observe the voltage variations. The PDA is an HP iPAQ h6340,
powered by a 4 V battery via four pins. We use a DAQ
to collect the instantaneous voltage values across a resistor
that connects the positive pin of the battery to that of the
device. The iPAQ has a built-in 802.11b WLAN interface and
a Bluetooth interface.
The testbed includes two types of devices: the Bluetooth
master and the Bluetooth slaves. The main difference from a
behavioral point of view is that traffic between slaves must go
Fig. 3. Power measurement setup implementation.
through the master, which implies higher levels of processing
and a higher power consumption at the master device. In this
setup, we monitor the power consumption on a slave device.
First, we are interested in comparing the power consumed
at the wireless interfaces of WLAN and Bluetooth, since it
is at the core of the perceived benefits of the system imple-
mentation. Then, we observe the power consumed during the
video streaming and we compare the implemented cooperative
architecture with the traditional architecture.
V. R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
We conduct several power measurements in various scenar-
ios and display the captured instantaneous results. Then, we
identify and separate the different components that contribute
together to the overall aggregate average power consumption
in the device over a fixed time window (see Table I). The
processing power refers to the power consumed at the PDA
by the processing of the video frames prior to and during
the display. Though peers are assigned threads to send and
receive frames over the P2P links, the power consumed by
the multithreading remains minimal as the number of peers N
increases, and the bulk of the processing activities is found
to be due to frame processing. The power consumption due
to the reception and transmission activities is included as part
of the transmission and reception powers and not as part of
the processing power. Since the number of processed frames
is the same for a given frame rate, regardless of the number
of cooperating entities in the network, the processing power is
assumed to be independent of N . Another observation worth
TABLE I
M EASUREMENT RESULTS .
State Average Power (W)
Idle Mode 0.188
Processing 0.095
Receiving over WLAN 0.500
Receiving over Bluetooth 0.015
Transmitting over Bluetooth 0.014
Wireless Medium Average Bit Rate (kbps)
Long Range (WLAN) 720
Short Range (Bluetooth) 221
mentioning is the dependency of the Bluetooth transmission 1
Traditional Scenario

power on distance and channel conditions. The HP iPAQ

Power [W]
h6340 implementation of Bluetooth does not comprise power 0.5

control which is an optional feature in the Bluetooth stan- 0

dard [8]. This resulted in a constant transmission power on 0 200 400
Time [ms]
600 800 1000

Cooperating Scenario − Two Peers

the Bluetooth interface. 1

Power [W]
A. Measurement-Based Study 0.5

It can be seen from the measurement results presented in 0

0 200 400 600 800 1000
Time [ms]
Table I that reception over WLAN is 33 times that required by Cooperating Scenario − Three Peers
1
either reception or transmission over Bluetooth. This is the key

Power [W]
observation that is expected to play a major role in making 0.5

the cooperative video streaming architecture power-efficient.

Moreover, measurements show that the WLAN interface is
constantly awakening to listen to periodic signals sent by
the wireless access point. These beacons notify the interface
whenever data is expected over the wireless medium. The
peaks in Figure 4 correspond to the power required to power
up the interface at each beacon. The transitions from idle, to
the Bluetooth Interface ON state, to the WLAN Interface ON
state are obviously accompanied by an increase in the power
floor, which makes the mere activation of the WLAN interface
expensive in terms of power consumption.
In the measurement setup, we have programmed the server
to send data every 100 ms which is the beacon period at the
wireless access point. Therefore, in a traditional architecture,
where the complete data stream is sent to the device, data
is received and decoded at each beacon. However, in the
implemented cooperative architecture, data is received over
WLAN every N beacon periods. In Figure 5, we plot the
measured power consumption profile as a function of the
number of cooperating peers (devices). The wide peaks cor-
respond to data reception, while the narrow ones correspond
to beacon reception. Results show that with three peers, there
is a wide peak only every three periods, which reduces the
power consumed over the WLAN interface by around three
times compared to the traditional architecture (case of one
peer). Another important observation in Figure 5 is that the
power consumed by Bluetooth transmission and reception at
Fig. 4. Measurement results: Power transitions in idle mode.
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Time [ms]
Fig. 5. Measurement results: Power consumption in traditional and cooper-
ative architectures.
each period is causing a relatively small increase in the power
floor. We shall note here that in a cooperative scenario with
N peers, each beacon in Figure 5 is synchronized with data
exchange over Bluetooth between the device and one of its
(N − 1) peers.
The resulting aggregate average powers over the measure-
ment time window are 0.394 W, 0.351 W, and 0.330 W
respectively for one, two, and three peers where we set the
access point throughput to 1 Mbps. This proves that actual
power reduction gain in mobile devices can be achieved via
the implemented cooperative video streaming architecture.
The power reduction gain reaches around 16% with three
cooperating devices.
B. Analytical-Based Study
This study is conducted for three main reasons: To support
the presented measurement results, to derive an expression
for the additional power consumed at the master device
due to traffic routing, and to obtain a generic model that
can be used to calculate power consumption for cooperative
video streaming as a function of different system and design
parameters. Based on the analysis of the measurement results
in different scenarios and on the identified power consumption
components presented in Table I, we derive the following
expression that relates aggregate power consumption to various
parameters:
µ ¶
F S PL,Rx (N − 1)
PAv = + (PS,Tx + PS,Rx )
N RL RS
+Pprocessing + Pidle (1)
where F S/(N RL ) is the reception time over the WLAN
interface for a given device, F SPL,Rx /(N RL ) is the energy
spent by a device during reception over WLAN, F S/(N RS ) is
the reception or transmission time over the Bluetooth interface
for a given device, (N − 1)F S(PS,Tx + PS,Rx )/(N RS ) is
the energy spent by a device due to transmitting the frame
N − 1 times to other peers and receiving N − 1 frames from
other peers over Bluetooth, Pprocessing is the processing power
 TABLE II
T HEORETICAL M ODEL PARAMETERS .
Input Description
RL The long-range bit rate
RS The short-range bit rate
F The video frame rate in frames per second
S The average video frame size in bits
FS The number of bits sent in one second
N The number of cooperative peers
PL,Rx The average power consumed by the long-range
interface during reception
PS,Rx The average power consumed by the short-range
interface during reception
PS,Tx The average power consumed by the short-range
interface during transmission
which is nearly constant for various values of N as discussed
before, and Pidle is the power consumed during idle state (no
communication) which is independent of N .
This model applies to all client devices in the network.
For the master device in the Bluetooth piconet, an additional
component Prouting should be added to PAv , in order to
account for the additional amount of power consumed at the
master due to routing which involves receiving frames from
a source client and forwarding them to a destination client. It
can be calculated as:
FS
Prouting = (N − 1)(N − 2) (PS,Tx + PS,Rx ) (2)
N RS
In addition to the different power components, the model
takes into account the number of cooperating devices, and the
active duration of the wireless interface which is a function of
the link bit rate and the data size. All parameters are defined
in Table II. Using the measurement values from Table I, we
plot in Figure 6 the total average power consumption at the
master mobile device as an aggregate of the different power
consumption components versus the number of peers N . We
exclude the processing and idle power components since they
are assumed constant for various values of N . The same plot
can be used to observe the aggregate power consumption at the
slave mobile devices, by just excluding the upper part of the
bars referring to SR routing. As N increases, we notice that
the long-range reception power decreases at a faster pace than
the increase in short-range powers. Results show that power
reduction gains of up to 20% can be achieved by having five
cooperating peers. It is important to note that the analytical
model results fit perfectly with the measured results for the
slave (cases with one, two, and three peers). This proves the
accuracy and usability of the derived analytical expressions.
As for the master, we notice that the routing power increases
as the number of cooperating entities increase in the network.
This centralization issue can be tackled by devising a scatternet
formation algorithm that ensures distributed routing within the
P2P network.
Fig. 6. Analytical aggregate power consumption as a function of the number
of cooperative peers N . LR stands for long range link (WLAN), SR stands
for short range link (Bluetooth), SR routing component applies only to the
case of the mobile device acting as Bluetooth piconet master.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
We implement and evaluate a testbed for a cooperative video
streaming architecture in order to obtain power consumption
measurement results and to derive a theoretical expression
that relates power consumption to various design and system
parameters. Presented results prove that allowing peer-to-peer
cooperation among mobile devices notably reduces power con-
sumption for video streaming without compromising the video
quality. This is important due to the limited battery capabilities
of mobile devices. In addition to the power reduction gains,
the implemented cooperative video streaming architecture can
result in throughput gains to network operators by reducing
the required traffic over long-range links and can result in
reduced service costs for end users who will be downloading
less content directly from the service provider.
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