CLAP

Abstract

Today, network operators are facing the new era of home networks where wireless 5 GHz band begins to play an important role. With higher capacity of standards operating on this band (e.g. IEEE 802.11a/n/ac), quality of service can be improved drastically; however, many difficulties still remain. Due to open nature of the medium, wireless network is vulnerable to all types of interference and disturbance. The challenge in ensuring service quality in such environment is crucial especially for multimedia delivery which emerges rapidly in today's home networks. As a consequence, network operator will have to guarantee these services in wireless environment the same way they do in wired networks. This paper will focus especially on IPTV application that does not require only high throughput but also has strict constraints on coverage and packet loss. Good reception level needs to be guaranteed in the whole house in order to use the highest modulation, and interferences need to be controlled when several transmitters share the medium. Therefore, this paper presents a new architecture for future home networks, in which multiple access points are deployed with coordination established to provide viable transmission of IPTV applications. The mechanism is built on top of DCF and has two main advantages: fully compatible with 802.11 standard clients and applicable to both downlink and uplink streams. The study has been conducted using NS-3 to evaluate performances of the Coordinated-APs compared to Single-AP and Distributed-APs approaches, in realistic home environment. The obtained results demonstrate better channel utilization and collision reduction of coordinated approach that can guarantee IPTV requirement.