Supporting Video Applications with Header Error Protection in 802.11-based Networks

In a multi-hop network, the throughput is essentially important for real-time applications due to their high bit rate requirement. We investigate the performance of multimedia applications in wireless networks and the impact of various error control protocols. In particular, 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, reduce the delay, and improve the video performance, via both theoretical analysis and simulation results.