Airtime Fair Distributed Cross-Layer Congestion Control for Real-Time Video Over WLAN

We propose a distributed cross-layer congestion control algorithm that provides enhanced quality of service QoS and reliable operation for real-time uplink video over WiFi applications. Such applications are characterized by many wireless devices transmitting video at various PHY rates over a relatively congested channel. Unfortunately, today's off-the-shelf 802.11 equipment can be easily demonstrated to suffer catastrophic failure when subject to these conditions-let alone provide acceptable perceptual quality to the user. We show that in order to remedy these issues, it is preferable to apply airtime fairness with a cross-layer approach. The idea is to use a fast frame-by-frame control loop in the carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA)-based medium access control (MAC) layer while simultaneously exploiting the powerful control loop gain attainable by performing source-rate adaptation in the application layer. We support the proposed algorithm through both simulation and experimentation with various channel and PHY rate scenarios.