Feedback-based real-time streaming over WiMax

The IEEE 802.16 standard (commonly known as WiMax) has emerged as one of the strongest contenders for broadband wireless access technology. At the same time, with the steady growth of real-time services such as voice over IP and video on demand, supporting delay sensitive streaming data over WiMax is becoming crucial. In this article we use commonly used techniques such as forward error correction (FEC) and automatic repeat request (ARQ) to support streaming services over WiMax without violating what has already been standardized. In particular, we look at the flexible features provided by media access control (MAC) layer of WiMax and exploit them for providing better streaming performance. We use the channel state information to dynamically construct the MAC packet data units. The sizes of these units are thusly determined such that the packet dropping probability is minimized without compromising the goodput. The simulation results presented show the performance enhancements of the proposed ARQ-enabled adaptive algorithm for streaming data