Evaluating MPEG-4/AVC Video Streaming over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Distribution System

The high cost of rewiring existing houses with Ethernet to support broadband home networks has motivated consumers and service providers for "no-new-wires" and "no- wires" technologies. IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN is preferred due to its flexibility and affordability, but the achievable coverage and data rate are still very limited in a household environment due to high attenuation and interference. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of MPEG-4 AVC video streaming over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Distribution System (WDS), which is often used to increase wireless coverage for data applications. Our results show that by properly adjusting wireless transmission power and rate, it is possible to increase the coverage and performance at the same time, which allows broadband, multimedia applications such as IPTV to be delivered in multiple hops across house.