Cross-Layer Optimization Based 802.11e MAC Processor toward Wireless Body Area Network

The video transmission over 802.11e WLAN can play a major role in the home theater applications that are able to interact with wireless body area network (WBAN). The wireless transmission of high definition (HDTV) and Blu-ray can be serviced around the body area in the residential environment. The optimized QoS control method to transmit the video transmission over WLAN is necessary in order to guarantee the quality. Cross-layer optimization (CLO) has been recently proposed for improving the QoS of the video transmission over WLAN. The 802.11e QoS defines just the MAC layer. Nevertheless, it does not include the video transmission method suitable for the residential environment. In this paper, we propose the system on chip (SoC) architecture of 802.11e-MAC in which the CLO packet generation is possible and suggest the smart-packet drop using the CLO packet information. The proposed SoC architecture is superior to the theoretical throughput of the DCF MAC over 17%. By using the CLO packet information, the proposed smart-packet drop makes the video transmission of the high quality possible. CLO packet information provides the realistic parameters between the PHY and MAC layers. The future WBAN MAC chip will be designed based on these proposals.