Scheduling for Media Function Virtualization

Broadcasters are building studio architectures based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) IT hardware because of advantages such as cost reduction, ease of management, and upgradation. Media function virtualization (MFV) leverages IP networking to transport media streams between virtual media functions (VMFs), where they are processed. Media service deployment in an MFV environment entails solving the VMF-FG scheduling problem to ensure that the required broadcast quality guarantees are fulfilled. In this paper, we formulate the VMF-FG scheduling problem and propose a greedy-based algorithm to solve it. The evaluation of the algorithm is carried in terms of the end-to-end delay and VMF queuing delay. Moreover, the importance of VMF-FG decomposition in upgradation to higher-quality formats is also highlighted.