Remote transmission system

• US 8,737,436 B2
• Filed: 02/08/2012
• Issued: 05/27/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LiveU Ltd. (LiveU, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: LiveU Ltd. (LiveU, Inc.)
• Inventors: Ohayon, Rony Haim, Cohen, Avichai
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Brian D
• Application Number:
  US13/368,369
• Publication Number:
  US 20120195259A1
• Time in Patent Office: 839 Days
• Field of Search: 370/328, 370/338, 370/536
• US Class Current: 370/536
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0697 using spatial multiplexing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0041 Arrangements at the transmitter end
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0045 Arrangements at the receiver end
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0058 Block-coded modulation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0071 Use of interleaving interleaving per se H03M13/27
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2212/00 Encapsulation of packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 25/02 Details ; arrangements for supplying electrical power along data transmission lines systems for transmitting signals via power distribution lines H04B3/54
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/25 with rate being modified by the source upon detecting a change of network conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 49/9057 Arrangements for supporting packet reassembly or resequencing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/60 Network streaming of media packets
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/324 in the data link layer [OSI layer 2], e.g. HDLC
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2187 Live feed
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2383 Channel coding or modulation of digital bit-stream, e.g. QPSK modulation arrangements for detecting or preventing errors in the information received by adapting the channel coding H04L1/0009; analogue front ends or means for connecting modulators, demodulators or transceivers to a transmission line H04L27/0002
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4382 Demodulation or channel decoding, e.g. QPSK demodulation analog front ends or means for connecting modulators, demodulators or transceivers to a transmission line H04L27/0002
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6131 involving transmission via a mobile phone network wireless downlink channel access H04W74/006
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6143 involving transmission via a satellite
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6175 involving transmission via Internet broadcast-related systems characterised by the transmission system being the Internet H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/631 Multimode Transmission, e.g. transmitting basic layers and enhancement layers of the content over different transmission paths or transmitting with different error corrections, different keys or with different transmission protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6375 for requesting retransmission , e.g. of data packets lost or corrupted during transmission from serverARQ protocols H04L1/18; implementation or adaptation of Internet protocol [IP], of transmission control protocol [TCP] or of user datagram protocol [UDP] H04L69/16
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/02 Arrangements for optimising operational condition
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/21 : in the uplink direction of a wireless link, i.e. towards the network
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 72/542 : using measured or perceived quality
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/15 : Setup of multiple wireless link connections

Abstract

A transmission apparatus includes a plurality of modems, which are configured to communicate via respective wireless communication channels and includes at least first and second modems configured to communicate respectively over separate first and second wireless communication networks. The transmission apparatus also includes a stream processor, which is configured to receive and process an incoming media stream so as to provide multiple upload streams for transmission by different ones of the modems, including first and second upload streams for transmission by the first and second modems, respectively.

Claims

1. A virtual broadband transmitting unit for uploading of media content from a remote location, comprising:

a multiplicity of modem managers, each associated with at least one of a multiplicity of wireless communication modems;

a stream processor configured to receive a live media datastream at the remote location;

generate via a data packet generator a multiplicity of packets for real-time live uploading in concert via said multiplicity of wireless communication modems; and

control via a transmission manager the upload in concert of said multiplicity of packets through said multiplicity of modems, by inequitably distributing said multiplicity of packets among said multiplicity of wireless communication modems for real-time uploading per a rate optimal for said wireless communication modems under the current prevailing conditions and based on at least one of;

upload channel quality of said wireless communication modems, and actual performance of said wireless communication modems;

wherein at least one of said wireless communication modems is associated with at least one wireless communication network accessible from said remote location.

2. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, further comprising a connection to a video encoder to encode said packets.

3. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, wherein said data packet generator comprises at least one of:

a forward error correction (FEC) processor to provide FEC codes to said packets;

a means to encapsulate numbered data packets;

an interleaver to shuffle said multiplicity of packets.

4. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, further comprising:

a queue buffer to receive said packets from said data packet generator.

5. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, further comprising said multiplicity of wireless communication modems to transmit said multiplicity of packets from said remote location.

6. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, wherein said multiplicity of modem managers comprise means to pull a next packet from said data packet generator for transmission via an associated wireless communication modem.

7. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, further comprising a back channel for receiving feedback regarding at least one of timeliness and quality of said transmitted packets.

8. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, further comprising:

a retransmission queue to store copies of said multiplicity of packets for retransmission;

wherein said transmission manager comprises means to search the retransmission queue to locate a copy of at least one missing data packets.

9. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, comprising a traffic analyzer to analyze at least one of performance data, performance trend, and feedback, and to adjust settings for one or more components of said virtual broadband transmitting unit in response to said analysis.

10. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, wherein the transmission manager inequitably distributes said multiplicity of packets among said multiplicity of modem managers based on actual uploading performance via at least one of said multiplicity of wireless communication modems during the ongoing upload session from the remote location.

11. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, wherein the stream processor inequitably distributes said multiplicity of packets among said multiplicity of modem managers by taking into account at least one of:

one or more factors that impact actual performance of said multiplicity of wireless communication modems, modem speed, modem reliability, connection quality, operating license limitations, network congestion, error rate, requests to retransmit packets, missing packets, delay of packets, modem rate, combined rate of all modem managers, invalid packets, retransmission requests, length of the transmission time for packets, timestamp for arrival of packets, missing packets numbers, packet numbers with errors, number of reconstructed packets, statistics of assembling of the stream, statistics of at least one buffer.

12. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, further comprising a traffic analyzer to optimize at least one of a quality and flow of at least one of multiplicity of connections over said multiplicity of wireless communication modems, and wherein the traffic analyzer instructs a video encoder to alter a rate of video data received from said video encoder.

13. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, further comprising a traffic analyzer to analyze feedback regarding at least one of timeliness and quality of transmitted data packets, and to adjust settings for one or more components of said virtual broadband transmitting unit in response to said analysis, wherein said one or more components comprise at least one of a video encoder, a forward error correction (FEC) processor, said data packet generator, a packet encapsulator, an interleaver, a queue buffer, and a modem manager.

14. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, wherein when one of the wireless communication modems has a reduction in errors, a reduction in missing packets, or a reduction in delay, then an associated modem manager raises a transmission rate of said wireless communication modem.

15. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, wherein a sum total of upload capacity of the virtual broadband transmitting unit represents a combined bandwidth to facilitate a generally live media transmission.

16. The virtual broadband transmitting unit of claim 1, wherein the stream processor configures a bandwidth of each sub-stream of packets, that is uploaded via said wireless communication modems, to lead to cost effectiveness.

17. A method for uploading of content at a remote location, the method implementable by a virtual broadband transmitting unit, the method comprising:

organizing a live media transmission generated at the remote location into data packets for real-time live uploading in concert via a multiplicity of wireless communication modems, each associated with at least one wireless communication network; and

uploading in real time said data packets of said live media transmission through a one or more of said wireless communication modems associated with those of said at least one wireless communication network accessible from said remote location by inequitably distributing said multiplicity of data packets among said multiplicity of wireless communication modems for real-time uploading per a rate optimal for said wireless communication modems under the current prevailing conditions based on at least one of;

upload channel quality of said wireless communication modems, and actual performance of said wireless communication modems.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

receiving feedback regarding success of said uploading;

analyzing said feedback; and

adjusting operational settings for said organizing and said multiplicity of wireless communication modems in response to results of said analyzing.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

receiving a retransmission request for at least one of said multiplicity of data packets; and

retransmitting said at least one data packet.

20. The method of claim 17, wherein inequitably distributing comprises:

inequitably distributing said data packets among said multiplicity of wireless communication modems based on actual performance of uploading via said multiplicity of wireless communication modems during the ongoing upload session.

21. The method of claim 17, wherein inequitably distributing comprises:

inequitably distributing said data packets among said multiplicity of wireless communication modems by taking into account at least one of;

one or more factors that impact actual performance of said multiplicity of wireless communication modems, modem speed, modem reliability, connection quality, operating license limitations, network congestion, error rate, requests to retransmit packets, missing packets, delay of packets, modem rate, combined rate of all modem managers, invalid packets, retransmission requests, length of the transmission time for packets, timestamp for arrival of packets, missing packets numbers, packet numbers with errors, number of reconstructed packets, statistics of assembling of the data packets, statistics of at least one buffer.

22. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

optimizing quality of at least one of multiplicity of connections over said multiplicity of wireless communication modems.

23. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

instructing a video encoder to increase a compression rate in order to reduce a bandwidth required to transmit video of said live media after processing.

24. The method of claim 17, comprising:

instructing a video encoder with instructions that are based on at least one of;

feedback channel data;

current statistics of said wireless communication modems;

performance trends among said wireless communication modems.

25. The method of claim 17, comprising:

when one of the wireless communication modems has a reduction in errors, a reduction in missing packets, or a reduction in delay, then raising a transmission rate of said wireless communication modem.

26. The method of claim 17, wherein the multiplicity of modem managers comprises at least:

a first modem manager associated with a cellular modem, and

a second modem manager associated with a Wi-Fi modem.

27. The method of claim 17, comprising:

configuring a number of sub-streams of packets, that are uploaded via said wireless communication modems, to lead to cost effectiveness.