A hybrid reservation/contention-based MAC for video streaming over wireless networks

—To reserve or not for bursty video traffic over wireless access networks has been a long-debated issue. For uplink transmissions in infrastructure-based wireless networks and peer-to-peer transmissions in mesh or ad-hoc networks, reservation can ensure the Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning at the cost of a lower degree of resource utilization. Contentionbased Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols are more flexible and efficient in sharing resources by bursty traffic to achieve a higher multiplexing gain, but the performance may degrade severely when the network is congested and collisions occur frequently. More and more wireless standards adopt a hybrid approach, which allows the coexistence of resource reservation and contention-based MAC protocols. However, how to costeffectively support video traffic using hybrid MAC protocols is still an open issue. In this paper, we first propose how to use hybrid MAC protocols to support video streaming over wireless networks. Then, ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: JSAC
• Authors: Ruonan Zhang, Rukhsana Ruby, Jianping Pan, Lin Cai, Xuemin Shen
• Keywords: JSAC 2010, MAC Protocols, Video Traffic, Wireless Networks