Guaranteeing QoE in audio-video transmission by IEEE 802.11e HCCA

This paper studies packet scheduling schemes with QoE (user-level QoS) guarantee for audio-video transmission in a wireless LAN with HCF controlled channel access (HCCA) of the IEEE 802.11e MAC protocol. We first propose the static scheduling (SS) scheme, which grants adjustable transmission opportunity (TXOP) duration for constant bit rate (CBR) traffic. The SS scheme can determine the minimum TXOP duration capable of guaranteeing high QoE; it can maximize the number of admitted flows. As the burstiness of variable bit rate (VBR) traffic cannot be absorbed by the SS scheme, we also propose the multimedia priority dynamic scheduling (MPDS) scheme, which can absorb the burstiness through allocating additional TXOP duration. We then compare the SS scheme, the MPDS scheme, and the reference scheduler (TGe scheme) in terms of application-level QoS and user-level QoS (QoE). Numerical results show that in the SS scheme, the QoE can be kept relatively higher even when the TXOP duration is reduced in the case of video with the I picture pattern; this implies that more flows can be admitted. In the case of video with the IPPPPP picture pattern, which has the VBR characteristic more remarkably, reducing the TXOP duration according to the SS scheme will deteriorate the QoS level. In this case, the MPDS scheme performs better when the number of multimedia stations is small. However, the performance of the MPDS scheme deteriorates with the increase of the number of multimedia stations, though the results are comparable to or even better than those of the SS and TGe schemes.