DYNAMIC RATE AND FEC ADAPTATION FOR VIDEO MULTICAST IN MULTI-RATE WIRELESS NETWORKS

摘要

Video multicast over Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) faces many challenges due to varying channel conditions and limited bandwidth. A promising solution to this problem is the use of packet level Forward Error Correction (FEC) mechanisms. However, the adjustment of the FEC rate is not a trivial issue due to the dynamic wireless environment. This decision becomes more complicated if one considers the multi-rate capability of the existing wireless LAN technology. A novel method which dynamically adapts the transmission rate and FEC for video multicast over multi-rate wireless networks is described. In order to evaluate the system experimentally, a prototype using open source drivers and socket programming was implemented. Experimental results show that the proposed system significantly improves the multicast system performance.