Network-Adaptive HD Video Streaming with Cross-Layered WLAM Channel Monitoring

In this paper, we propose a practical implementation of network-adaptive HD(high definition) MPEG-2 video streaming with a cross-layered channel monitoring(CLM) over the IEEE 802.11a WLAN(wireless local area network). For wireless channel monitoring, AP(access point) periodically measures the MAC(medium access control) layer transmission information and sends the monitoring information to a streaming server. This makes that the streaming server reacts more quickly as well as efficiently to the fluctuated wireless channel than that of the end-to-end monitoring(E2EM) scheme for the video adaptation. The streaming sewer dynamically performs the priority-based frame dropping to adjust the video sending rate according to the measured wireless channel condition. For this purpose, our streaming system nicely provides frame-based prioritized packetization by using a real-time stream parsing module. Various evaluation results over an IEEE 802.11a WLAM testbed are provided to verify the intended QoS adaptation capability The experimental results show that the proposed system can effectively mitigate the quality degradation of video streaming caused by the fluctuations of time-varying wireless channel condition.