Patent ID: 8745677

Claim:
A base station for managing transmission of packets over a communication link in a communication network, the base station comprising: a transmission module configured to transmit packets over the communication link; a video quality measurement module configured to obtain packets containing frames of a video stream from a backhaul port, the frames comprising multiple frame groups, and to determine estimated contributions of a discard of all frames of each frame group to at least one video quality measurement of the video stream; a priority assignment module configured to receive the estimated contributions of each frame group to the at least one quality measurement and to assign a priority to each of the packets based at least on the frame groups associated with the frames in the respective packet; and a selection module configured to select at least one of the packets for discard utilizing the assigned priorities and to supply the packets not selected for discard to the transmission module for transmission over the communication link, wherein the video quality measurement module is further configured to receive indications of the packets that are selected for discard and to include the indications in determining the contributions of the frames comprising packets that have not yet been selected for discard to the at least one video quality measurement, and wherein the priority assignment module is further configured to utilize the contributions of frames comprising packets that have not yet been selected for discard to the at least one video quality measurement in assigning the priorities to the packets not yet selected for discard.