QoE-aware admission control and MAC layer parameter configuration algorithm in WLAN

In IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN), the quality of the experience (QoE) of HTTP video streaming is seriously influenced by the restricted bandwidth and shared resources. However, to the best of our knowledge, the assessment and optimization of QoE of HTTP video streaming in WLAN have not been fully studied yet. In this paper, we propose an objective metric to assess the QoE and obtain the relationship between this metric and the achieved MAC layer throughput, which makes the MAC layer be aware of the QoE performance directly. Then, a novel admission control and MAC layer parameter configuration algorithm is proposed, which optimizes the QoE of HTTP video streaming and guarantees the throughput requirement of background traffic. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms legacy IEEE 802.11 DCF in QoE optimization by a factor of six or more when the number of background stations is large.