BeeCast: A Device-to-Device Collaborative Video Streaming System

In this paper, we propose BeeCast, a collaborative video streaming system that facilitates collaborative video streaming for a group of mobile users with limited Internet connectivity. The novelty of the proposed system is the ability to watch the video on a shared screen or to watch the video on multiple screens. The latter option entails proposing a method to exchange the downloaded video segments among the users using device-to-device communication. The proposed system is composed of two components: BeeBuzzer, and BeePlanner. The BeeBuzzer component manages and coordinates the segment exchange among devices, while BeePlanner component enhances the overall Quality of Experience (QoE) through effective segment assignments decisions for each user. Simulation results show that using BeeCast in an unstable network produces a more consistent QoE than individual streaming while eliminating 80% of redundant network traffic.