Multimedia streams and quality of service in the next generation wireless home networks

This paper describes the infrastructure provided in the Whitecap/sup TM/ LAN architecture to facilitate transporting isochronous data, such as multimedia, over wireless home networks. The Whitecap architecture provides an extensive support for streams and a comprehensive quality of service (QoS) layer. The Qos layer provided in the Whitecap architecture ensures efficient utilization of the available bandwidth and timely and reliable delivery of data under all channel conditions. To facilitate efficient utilization of bandwidth, the Whitecap architecture provides dynamic bandwidth negotiation for each stream based on its priority and optional variable rate compression schemes for voice, audio, video and data. In order to deliver isochronous data reliably while incurring just the permissible latency, the Whitecap architecture guarantees the required bandwidth for isochronous streams. To cope with severe channel conditions, the Whitecap architecture provides dynamic rate control that enables graceful degradation of data quality with increasing channel losses. As part of DRC, dynamically negotiable channel protection through error correction and retransmission schemes is provided in this architecture. Additionally, where multiple channels are available, dynamic channel change that moves the network operation to a better channel is also facilitated.