Mobile WiMAX video quality and transmission efficiency

This paper explores rules and defines cross layer parameters that enhance the received video quality per unit bandwidth while observing strict video QoS for unicast video transmission over mobile WiMAX. Channel capacity and goodput are estimated using a detailed MAC/PHY simulator. The simulator supports link adaptation of the PHY layer Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) alongside MAC layer Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ). A new performance indicator, PSNR per Hz, is defined to capture the video PSNR attained for a given effective bandwidth. For the 3GPP urban micro channel, MCS and MAC layer block lifetime are jointly determined as a function of average channel SNR in order to enhance video PSNR and goodput. At low SNR higher level QAM is inefficient (as a result of excessive MAC layer ARQ or high packet error rate) for video transfer. Results show that video efficiency improves for block lifetimes up to 100ms, since the greater use of ARQ enables more spectrally efficient MCS modes to be applied.