A novel QoE based cross‑layer scheduling scheme for video applications in 802.11 wireless LANs

摘要

In the past two decades, 802.11 based Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have gained popularity in offering Internetservices and increasingly supporting data driven video streaming applications. Such services demand enhancedview quality to all the end-users in the network. However, due to the sharing of limited resources and lack of properscheduling mechanisms, WLANs are unable to meet the requirements of numerous video users and provide them betterquality. Therefore, an effective resource scheduling approach is needed that can achieve high user satisfaction for theever changing user needs for quality video viewing. In this paper, a Quality of Experience based Cross-Layer Scheduling(QoECLS) scheme to enhance the user experience for video applications in WLANs is proposed. Here, the Mean OpinionScore has been used as a measure to evaluate the user experience. In order to provide the average user throughput withguarantee of fairness among users, the QoECLS scheme uses cross-layer information from the application and physicallayer, respectively. The QoECLS algorithm allocates transmission resources by considering application feedback along withchannel state information and buffer status. The performance of the QoECLS approach was extensively studied throughsimulations and the results showed an improvement in user experience and throughput, while maintaining fairnessamong the users. In terms of throughput, the proposed scheme achieves 25%, 45 %, and 50% improvement comparedto QoE Aware Scheduling scheme, Modified-Largest Weighted Delay First scheduler and Exponential-Proportional Fairscheduler, respectively.