MAC-aware Loss Discrimination for Real-time Streaming Services in Wireless Networks

Abstract

This paper addresses the rate control problem for real-time applications streamed over wireless networks. In wired networks, an equation-based rate control such as TCP-friendly rate control (TFRC) can be used to control the rates of a source under the assumption that the loss is primarily due to congestion. But in wireless networks, packet loss may be due either to congestion or to channel errors. Thus, it is necessary to differentiate between packet loss due to wireless channel errors and that due to congestion. The MAC-aware rate control scheme for real-time streaming applications discriminates packet losses due to channel errors using the event generation in the MAC layer. The simulation results show that the MAC-aware rate control scheme has higher throughput than the rate control scheme without loss classification.