Header Error Protection for Multimedia Data Transmission in WLANS

In a wireless LAN, the throughput is essentially important for multimedia applications due to their high bit rate requirement. In this paper, we propose two link layer error protection schemes that improve the effective throughout of wireless networks. Error control is applied to the packet header and packet payload separately. The network intermediate nodes either use header FEC or header CRC checksum to successfully transport the packets from the source to the destination. Only at the destination, error in payload may be corrected. We compare proposed schemes with 802.11 protocol and show that header error protection strategy can effectively increase the throughput, reduce the delay, and improve the video performance, via both theoretical analysis and simulation results.