Enhancing real-time mobile health video streams: A cross-layer Region-of-Interest based approach

Achieving good-quality video frames and minimizing transmission delays are some of the most challenging requirements in the telemedicine system. The transmission process for real-time video streaming over wireless networks is affected by various real-time constraints, such as encoding mechanisms, noise, and bandwidth fluctuations, which can adversely affect the reliability and quality of the video transmission system. This work proposes a cross-layer system designed to enhance the Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Service (QoS) for streaming video in low-latency applications over mobile health networks (m-Health), employing a Region-Of-Interest (ROI) video coding-based solution. Our system employs a modified extension of the multipath QUIC (MPQUIC), tailored to the context of emerging networks based on a 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN), facilitating the reliable transmission of priority data through cellular networks and the unreliable transmission of non-priority data via a satellite link. Given the significance of the ROI, our system prioritizes these regions for reliable streaming, ensuring high-quality reception while sacrificing background quality by employing unreliable streaming. Simulation results demonstrate that our approach improves upon both state-of-the-art MPQUIC protocols and unreliable QUIC protocols. Specifically, the overall video quality increases by up to 40%, with up to a 50% improvement in ROI region quality compared to unreliable QUIC. Additionally, end-to-end delay is reduced by up to 35% compared to MPQUIC delays. Evaluations of both QoS and QoE have been carried out to validate the proposed approach. Furthermore, Our modified MPQUIC records a significant improvement in data rate measurements by up to 86% compared to the classical MPQUIC.