Access point centric scheduling for dash streaming in multirate 802.11 wireless network

It is of great importance in a WiFi network to achieve a good user experience and fair allocation of the limited bandwidth resource. In this paper we propose the design of a cross-layer AP (Access Point) centric streaming scheduler for DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) in multirate 802.11 wireless networks. Residing at the AP, the scheduler achieves proportional fairness at the packet level by implementing weighted fair queuing. At the request level, the scheduler uses URL redirection to modify the client's request when necessary to reduce playback freezes and fluctuations. Extensive simulations in ns2 show that our scheduler improves the clients' playback experiences and achieves a fairer bandwidth allocation while fully utilizing the available bandwidth resource.