A Hybrid Design Framework for Video Streaming in IEEE 802.11e Wireless Network

Over the past decade, wireless network access and video streaming services have become more popular than ever. However, IEEE 802.11 DCF and IEEE 802.11e EDCA are not specifically designed for video streaming. This leads to the problem of transmitting overdue video packets and thus degrades both network performance and video quality. In this paper, we propose a hybrid design framework which consists of a MAC-centric cross-layer architecture to allow MAC- layer to retrieve video streaming packet information, a hybrid retransmission deadline and retry limit to save unnecessary packet waiting time, and a single-video multi-level queue to prioritize I/P/B slice (packet) delivery. Simulations show that the proposed methodology outperforms IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.11 Timebase and IEEE 802.11e in packet loss rate, invalid packet ratio, delay time, jitter, and PSNR.