Experimental Comparison of Wired versus Wireless Video Streaming over IEEE 802.11b WLANs

In this paper the performance of streaming MPEG-4 video with a video server located on the wired network streaming to wireless clients is compared with the performance of a video server located in the wireless network streaming to wireless video clients. We experimentally investigate the performance for a number of concurrent video streams with varying video frame sizes, frame rates and packetisation schemes. The performance is measured in terms of the key parameters of bit rate, loss rate and mean delay. We show how that there is a trade-off for these parameters for a wired and wireless located server. We show that a wired located server is susceptible to high loss rates when there are a number of concurrent video streams whilst the wireless located server has greater performance in terms of a low loss rate but incurs greater delays due to having to compete with more stations in order to access to the medium