Title :
Video-Aware Rate Adaptation for MIMO WLANs
Author :
An Chan ; Lundgren, H. ; Salonidis, T.
Author_Institution :
Univ. of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA
Abstract :
The IEEE 802.11n standard supports very high physical layer data rates using Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna technologies. Despite such high rates, High Definition (HD) video streaming is still challenging in WLAN deployments. In this paper, we show that the wireless channel probing overhead of existing 802.11n data rate adaptation mechanisms can be detrimental to HD video performance. We propose VARA, a Video-Aware Rate Adaptation protocol that addresses this problem by adapting the frequency and timing of wireless probing to both video encoding rate variations and wireless channel variations. In addition, VARA employs novel strategies that multiplex several Variable Bit Rate (VBR) HD video streams by minimizing their aggregate peak rate requirement. Our experimental evaluations for static and mobile scenarios in a MIMO 802.11n wireless testbed demonstrate the practical benefits of VARA over state-of-the-art 802.11n rate adaptation protocols.
Keywords :
MIMO communication; antenna arrays; encoding; protocols; video streaming; wireless LAN; wireless channels; HD video streaming; IEEE 802.11n standard; MIMO WLAN; VARA; VBR; high definition video streaming; mobile scenarios; multiple input multiple output antenna technologies; variable bit rate; video encoding rate variations; video-aware rate adaptation protocol; wireless channel variations; IEEE 802.11n Standard; MIMO; Multiplexing; Probes; Protocols; Streaming media; Wireless communication;
Conference_Titel :
Network Protocols (ICNP), 2011 19th IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Vancouver, BC
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-1392-7
DOI :
10.1109/ICNP.2011.6089071