Implementing a Cooperative MAC Protocol for Wireless Video Multicast

Wireless video multicast enables delivery of popular events to many wireless users in a bandwidth efficient manner. However, providing good and stable video quality to a large number of users with varying channel conditions remains elusive. In our previous work, we integrated layered video coding with cooperative communication to enable efficient and robust video multicast in infrastructure-based wireless networks. Through simulation and analysis, we showed that cooperative multicast improves the multicast system performance and the coverage area. In this work, we integrate the proposed system with packet level forward error correction (FEC) and evaluate the viability of the system in a realistic environment. We implement the system at the MAC layer and report the experimental results in a medium size (i.e., 8 stations) testbed. The experimental results confirm that the new cooperative MAC protocol for multicast, delivers superior performance.