Bandwidth Allocation for MPEG-4 Traffic in IEEE 802.11e Wireless Networks Based on Traffic Prediction

How to dynamically allocate channel time (TXOP) for VBR MPEG-4 video traffic in IEEE 802.1 le networks is an open problem. Because VBR traffic can have very different frame sizes from one frame to another, fixed channel time allocation (e.g. according to fixed-size I, P, B frames) results in less optimal performance, e.g. lower channel utilization and higher delay variation. In this paper we propose a bandwidth allocation method based on MPEG-4 traffic prediction. In the proposed scheme TXOPs are allocated based on accurate traffic predictions, therefore matching network resources to the traffic demand. Application QoS is maintained while network utilization is kept high. Furthermore, the simple, adaptive linear predictor does not incur much computation overhead. Simulation results have demonstrated the accuracy of the proposed prediction algorithm and effectiveness of the bandwidth allocation method.