Steiner Trees Composition and Scalable Video Coding for Satelite Video Multicast

The use of Low Earth orbit satellites (LEO) for communication has become a reality (e.g., SpaceX). The usage of Internet communication for communicating videos is very significant. We propose a scheme based on Scalable Video Coding (SVC) that fits multicast to users with heterogeneous resolution demands (e.g., mobile phones, computer screens, and HD televisions). The use of SVC allows a significant reduction in the total communicated information, typically a reduction of dozens of percentages. We build a hierarchy of optimal Steiner trees to communicate the video-encoded layers of the SVC. The first Steiner tree spans across all the terminals and is used to convey the first layer of the SVC, and the second spans the terminals that require more resolution than the basic resolution. The third Steiner tree spans the terminals that require even more resolution, and so forth for the following Steiner trees and SVC layers. We suggest a new algorithm for finding the Steiner trees in the hierarchy, such that they are all optimal and prefer edges not used by the Steiner trees that are used for previous layers. Thus, communication can be distributed without sacrificing optimality.