An integrated testbed for wireless multimedia computing

A testbed has been constructed to evaluate node architectures that support multimedia applications and services across a wireless network. Using this testbed, a low bitrate subband video compression algorithm has been prototyped in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and evaluated for video networking across bandwidth-limited RF channels. A radio interface has been prototyped in an FPGA and a common applications programming interface (API) has been developed to allow experimentation with multiple radios. This testbed has been used to evaluate node performance under two different wireless applications: 1) simultaneous video and data networking (VTALK) and 2) TCP/IP utilities such as FTP and telnet. Based on this evaluation, the design of a battery-operated high throughput wireless multimedia node is presented.