MAC-level video frame grouping using cross-layer architecture

Actually, the 802.11 WLAN is considered as the IP-centric wireless access network and it is more asked to transport IP multimedia services such as IPTV, VoIP, etc. In this context, QoS provisioning in 802.11 WLAN for real-time traffic is becoming a main issue that should be addressed. In this paper, we propose a 802.11 MAC-level video frame grouping using cross-layer architecture. The MAC frame grouping is a scheme introduced to improve the transmission performance by sharing the contention delay between the grouped frames at MAC layer. In our proposal, the frame grouping is applied on MAC frames belonging to the same video frame using a cross-layer design. The 802.11 MAC layer is augmented with an extra-application-awareness to exploit RTP-level information needed for an intelligent frame grouping. Extensive performance evaluations using experimental test-bed show two important results regarding our proposal: (1) its capability to cancel packet losses for video stream compared to a conventional system and (2) its consequence on UDP and TCP concurrent streams.