Feasible HCCA Polling Mechanism for Video Transmission in IEEE 802.11e WLANs

Abstract

IEEE 802.11e standard defines two Medium Access Control (MAC) functions to support Quality of Service (QoS) for wireless local area networks: Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) and HCF Controlled Channel Access (HCCA). EDCA provides fair prioritized QoS support while HCCA guarantees parameterized QoS for the traffics with rigid QoS requirements. The latter shows higher QoS provisioning with Constant Bit Rate (CBR) traffics. However, it does not efficiently cope with the fluctuation of the Variable Bit Rate (VBR) video streams since its reference scheduler generates a schedule based on the mean characteristics of the traffic. Scheduling based on theses characteristics is not always accurate as these traffics show high irregularity over the time. In this paper, we propose an enhancement on the HCCA polling mechanism to address the problem of scheduling pre-recorded VBR video streams. Our approach enhances the polling mechanism by feed-backing the arrival time of the subsequent video frame of the uplink traffic obtained through cross-layering approach. Simulation experiments have been conducted on several publicly available video traces in order to show the efficiency of our mechanism. The simulation results reveal the efficiency of the proposed mechanism in providing less delay and high throughput with conserving medium channel through minimizing the number of Null-Frames caused by wasted polls.

Review on QoS provisioning approaches for supporting video traffic in IEEE802.11e: challenges and issues

“…In AF-HCCA, the QSTAs will be prevented from receiving unnecessary large TXOP which produces a remarkable increase in the packet delay. Furthermore, the surplus time of the wireless channel conserved by reducing the number of poll frames throughout the feedback is another benefit of this research.The integrated scheme of AF-HCCA shows superior performance compared to IEEE802.11e HCCA, Enhanced EDD [83] and F-Poll [79] schedulers in terms of delay and channel utilization without affecting the system throughput. However, preserved TXOP time is not efficiently utilized to enhance the flow capacity.…”

“…F-Poll In Feasible Polling Scheme (F-Poll) [79], the application layer gives the accurate arrival-time of the upcoming data frame over the uplink connection to the MAC layer, where this approach is known as a cross-layering approach. F-Poll is suitable for both type II and III of video types categorized in Subsection III-A, where the exact information of the next inter-arrival time is sent to the QAP in order to enhance the scheduling of the TSs.…”

“…Published from 2004 to 2009 Published since 2010 HCCA Polling [95], [65], [96], [63], [97], [77], [98], [99], [100] [78], [101], [31], [102], [103], [48], [104], [105], [79], [106] TXOP Allocation [56], [18], [66], [107], [81], [108], [109], [25], [110], [111], [112], [54], [29], [39], [55], [24], [113], [61], [34], [36] [114], [38], [115], [62], [116] [59], [60], [26] [92] Admission Control [88], [117], [118], [66], [119], [120]...…”

Hybrid CSMA/CA and HCCA uplink medium access control protocol for VLC based heterogeneous users

“…Hence, a novel strategic parameters selection (SPS) algorithm is proposed in [21] to reduce the uplink latency of IEEE 802.11 WLAN. [22,23] illustrate that the HCCA MAC protocol supports a high quality of service (QoS) as well as guarantees the service to the traffics in WLAN according to the transmission opportunity (TXOP) based on traffic specification (TSPEC) parameters. In [22], the authors have proposed a modified HCCA MAC protocol with an enhancement of polling mechanism for variable bit rate (VBR) video streams by providing arrival time feedback of the following video frame in the uplink traffic.…”

Elastic QoS Scheduling with Step-by-Step Propagation in IEEE 802.11e Networks with Multimedia Traffic

“…Feedbackbased algorithms try to correct the fixed as provided by the reference, such as the classical Feedback Based Dynamic Scheduler (FBDS) [24], or the more recent [27,28]. Information about the size of video frames is used by [29] or the arrival time of the subsequent video frame of the uplink traffic [30] to compute dynamic s. Real-time theory is borrowed to manage the polling list considering temporal requirements in [8], or in Wireless Capacity-Based Scheduler (WCBS) [21], that is based on Earliest Deadline First (EDF) [31] algorithm and on a capacity recharging mechanism that implies a postponing of the deadline and a remix of the polling list order, and in the classical Scheduling Estimated Transmission Time-Earliest Due Date (SETT-EDD) [32], and Real-Time HCCA (RTH) scheduler [20] that regulates the polling list using EDF. In particular, RTH, which will be compared through simulation with DTH and DTH with threshold, is a periodic scheduler, based on EDF algorithm plus Stack Resource Policy (SRP) algorithm [33], that introduces the concept of nonpreemptability of frame transmissions that are considered as critical sections.…”