Header Error Protection for Multimedia Data Transmission in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Multimedia applications have different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. In a multi-hop network, the throughput is essentially important for real-time applications due to their high bit rate requirement. In the wireless networks, error comes from fading, noise, or interference. Link layer error control will have impact on the end-toend throughput. In this paper we propose a two stage error control scheme that improves the effective throughout of wireless networks. We apply error control to the packet header and packet load separately. The network intermediate nodes either use header FEC or header CRC checksum to successfully transport the packets from the source to the destination. Only at the destination, the error of the load is corrected. We compare the proposed schemes with 802.11 protocol and show that header error protection strategy can effectively increase the throughput and the video performance, via both theoretical analysis and simulation results.