Performance analysis of MPEG-4 video stream with FEC error recovery over IEEE 802.11 DCF WLANs

Due to the increasing use of mobile and handheld devices, the performance of video streaming over wireless networks has emerged as an important concern in recent years. However, while many analytical models have been proposed for analyzing the system performance, these models do not take explicit account of the effects of error recovery. As a result, they fail to provide an accurate indication of the true video quality at the receiver end. Accordingly, this paper proposes a model for evaluating the performance of MPEG-4 video streaming with Forward Error Correction (FEC) over IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). The proposed model considers not only the effects of congestion and wireless frame losses, but also the FEC error recovery performance in improving the perceived video quality at the receiver end. The validity of the proposed model is demonstrated by comparing the predicted values of the Playable Frame Rate (PFR) with the results obtained from NS-2 simulations and two existing analytical models, respectively. The results confirm that the proposed model provides an accurate indication of the perceived quality of FEC-protected MPEG-4 video streaming over DCF WLANs.