Designing cross-layering solutions for wireless networks: a general framework and its application to a voice-over-WiFi scenario

Cross-layer design has been proposed to optimize the performance of networks by exploiting the interdependency among the protocol layers. Although many articles are available in this field, no quantitative framework for the analysis of crosslayer effects and design of cross-layering solutions is available yet. This paper introduces a framework for analyzing and quantifying cross-layer interactions and for supporting the design of cross-layering techniques to optimize network performance, also including cost-benefits considerations. A case study from IEEE 802.11-based voice over IP (VoIP) is used to illustrate the approach