Video quality prediction in the presence of MAC contention and wireless channel error

Abstract

This paper proposes an integrated model to predict the quality of video, expressed in terms of mean square error (MSE) of the received video frames, in an IEEE 802.1 le wireless network. The proposed system takes into account contention at the MAC layer, wireless channel error, queueing at the MAC layer, parameters of different 802.1 le access categories (ACs), and video characteristics of different H.264 data partitions (DPs). To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first system that takes these network and video characteristics into consideration to predict video quality in an IEEE 802.1 le network. The proposed system consists of two components. The first component predicts the packet loss rate of each H.264 data partition by using a multi-dimensional discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC) coupled to a M/G/l queue. The second component uses these packet loss rates and the video characteristics to predict the MSE of each received video frames. We verify the accuracy of our combination system by using discrete event simulation and real H.264 coded video sequences.