iBE: A Novel Bandwidth Estimation Algorithm for Multimedia Services over IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

Recently, multimedia streaming services over IEEE 802.11 based wireless networks have increased dramatically. This results in manifold increase in the bandwidth requirement, especially for high-quality multimedia services. Given the bandwidth constraint in the wireless networks, one of the most critical factors in improving the end-to-end performance of multimedia application is the fast and accurate estimation of bandwidth. This paper proposes a novel bandwidth estimation algorithm, iBE. The significant feature of iBE is that it relies on multimedia packets only from the application layer. In addition, iBE recognizes the dynamic fluctuations of the wireless channel quickly, which in-turn enables iBE to be used for real-time services. The experimental results demonstrate that the accuracy of the bandwidth estimated by iBE is significantly superior to other methods like Spruce. Secondly, even in high traffic conditions, the bandwidth estimated by iBE is very close to the actual measured bandwidth, unlike the other state-of-the-art methods.