Channel pool management for video streaming in WLAN

In this paper, we present a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) channel selection algorithm and testbed implementation for video streaming applications. We call this type of spectrum management functionality Channel Pool Management (CPM). Specifically, we designed a scheme called Shifted Mask Superposition (SMS) that harnesses the transmitter spectral mask to help predict WLAN channel quality dynamically with only passively monitored channel information. We performed extensive experiments to model the spectral mask and verified the effectiveness of our algorithm. Based on our scheme, we built a testbed that implements the main functionality within CPM and performed channel switching without disrupting the video streaming application. Experiments showed that our proposed scheme can predict the best channel for video streaming with 90% accuracy and can improve the video quality significantly compared to systems that do not implement CPM.