Real time transmission of MPEG2 video over 802.11a wireless LANs

We analyze the impact of errors on streaming MPEG2 transport streams over 802.11a networks. We observed that packet size has a significant impact on packet loss rate and overall channel throughput among other issues and hence has a significant impact on streamed video quality. One other interesting result is that there appears to be a correlation between transmission packet size and the distribution of MPEG2 transport packet errors associated with I, B, and P frames. Using small transmission packets results in proportionally more lost MPEG2 transport packets associated with I-frames than when using large packets, although the overall transmission packet error rate is lower when using smaller packets. On the other hand, using larger packets results in improved throughput efficiency, which allows higher transmission rates. Therefore medium size packets of size 3-5 transport packets are a good compromise.