An Efficient MAC Layer Packet Fragmentation Scheme with Priority Queuing for Real-Time Video Streaming

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel priority-aware packet fragmentation extension to high throughput WLANs such as IEEE 802.11n for streaming of H264/AVC encoded videos. Unlike existing fragmentation schemes, the proposed scheme fragments IP packets based on the priority of video packets and the characteristics of MPEG-2 TS, where the original IP packet is fragmented into smaller IP packets containing fewer TS packets and prioritizes individual TS packets, allocated to an appropriate priority queue. The proposed scheme is evaluated on a testbed with various network congestion levels and channel conditions. The results show that the proposed scheme achieves higher quality of the streaming video in terms of PSNR than existing schemes as the network congestion level and the bit error rate increase.