Patent ID: 8542609

Claim:
A method for controlling an encoder in a communications system including a plurality of receivers, wherein the encoder output consists of a plurality of streams, and wherein a first decodable subset of the plurality of streams is decoded independently of a second decodable subset of the plurality of the streams, the method including the steps of: (a) partitioning the plurality of receivers into a plurality of cells, wherein each of the cells is associated with a decodable subset of the streams; (b) assigning an initial transmission rate to each decodable subset of the streams based on an estimate of available bandwidth for communicating with receivers in the cell associated with the decodable subset of the streams; (c) for a first cell of the plurality of cells, determining an average distortion perceived by the receivers in the first cell and the receivers in cells bordering the first cell given the initial transmission rate assigned to the decodable subset of the streams associated with the first cell; (d) determining whether the average distortion exceeds a threshold distortion; (e) in response to determining that the average distortion exceeds the threshold distortion, assigning a new transmission rate to the decodable subset of the streams associated with the first cell, wherein the new transmission rate is based on minimizing the average distortion perceived by the receivers in the cells bordering the first cell; and (f) controlling the encoder to output the decodable subset of the streams associated with the first cell in accordance with the new transmission rate assigned to the decodable subset of the streams; wherein the decodable subsets of the streams have one or more of the following adaptable properties: the signal representation length per time unit; the error resilience; and the erasure resilience.