A cross-layer framework for adaptive video streaming over IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

Development in video compression techniques and wireless techniques has resulted in considerable amount of video streaming applications in the wireless networks. However, the time varying transmission characteristic of the wireless channels leads to poor performance of multimedia traffic over wireless networks. This results in longer packet delay, jitter and lower throughput that deteriorate the video quality considerably at the receiving end, thus diminishing the user experience. In this work, we propose cross-layer framework which optimizes the transcoding rate at the application layer depending upon the channel condition estimated using parameters associated with the data-link layer. Further, we evaluate the proposed frame work using NS-2 simulator with EvalVid framework. We use three different motion video sequences to evaluate the proposed frame work. Our simulation result shows that the proposed cross-layer frame work improves the video quality in all the three cases at the receiving end.