Downlink media streaming with wireless fountain coding in wireline-cum-WiFi networks

• Authors: Surachai Chieochan;Ekram Hossain
• Venue: Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing
• Year: 2012

This paper addresses the problem of streaming packetized media data in a combined wireline/802.11 network. Since the wireless channel is normally the bottleneck for media streaming in such a network, we propose that wireless fountain coding (WFC) be used over the wireless downlink in order to efficiently utilize the wireless bandwidth and exploit the broadcast nature of the channel. Forward error correction (FEC) is also used to combat errors at the application-layer. We analytically obtain the moment generating function (MGF) for the wireless link-layer delay incurred by WFC. With the MGF, the expected value of this wireless link-layer delay is found and used by the access point (AP), who has no knowledge of the buffer contents of wireless receivers, to make a coding-based decision. We then derive the end-to-end packet loss/late probability based on the MGF. We develop an integrated ns-3/EvalVid simulator to evaluate our proposed system and compare it with the traditional 802.11e scheme which is without WFC capability but equipped with application- and link-layer retransmission mechanisms. Through extensive simulations of video streaming, we show that streaming with WFC is able to support more concurrent video flows compared to the traditional scheme. When the deadlines imposed on video packets are relatively stringent, streaming with WFC also shows superior performance in terms of packet loss/late probability, video distortion, and video frame delay, over the traditional scheme. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (This work was supported by a scholarship from TRLabs and in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.)