Application layer ARQ for protecting video packets over an indoor MIMO-OFDM link with correlated block fading

The quality of experience (QoE) of IP-packetized streaming video is affected by both packet loss and packet delay variations. When the network delivering the video content contains a wireless link, occasional deep fades give rise to bursts of packet losses. In order to maintain a sufficient video QoE at the end user, video packets must be protected against losses by means of a suitable form of error control. In this contribution, we consider an indoor radio MIMO-OFDM transceiver operating over a Rayleigh block-fading channel with arbitrary correlation in the time and frequency dimensions, which makes use of an application layer Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) protocol to provide additional protection of the video content against packet loss. We analyze the resulting residual packet loss performance, under a latency constraint imposed by the requirement of a small TV channel switching delay. This analysis makes direct use of the fading characterization (correlation functions in time and frequency dimensions) of the indoor environment, rather than relying on a Markov model that only approximately describes the packet loss process. Numerical results are obtained by Monte Carlo integration combined with an efficient importance sampling technique devised for the problem at hand. Assuming a 2.4 GHz wireless link, we point out how to select the system parameters (number of antennas, number of retransmissions) in order to achieve a residual packet loss performance yielding a satisfactory QoE for HDTV transmission.