Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Fall 1-31-2010

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering - (Ph.D.)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Nirwan Ansari

Second Advisor

Doru Calin

Third Advisor

Roberto Rojas-Cessa

Fourth Advisor

Yun Q. Shi

Fifth Advisor

Osvaldo Simeone

Abstract

Extensive efforts have been focused on deploying broadband wireless networks. Providing mobile users with high speed network connectivity will let them run various multimedia applications on their wireless devices. In order to successfully deploy and operate broadband wireless networks, it is crucial to design efficient methods for supporting various services and applications in broadband wireless networks. Moreover, the existing "access-oriented" networking solutions are not able to fully address all the issues of supporting various applications with different quality of service requirements. Thus, "service-oriented" networking has been recently proposed and has gained much attention.

This dissertation discusses the challenges and possible solutions for supporting multimedia applications in broadband wireless networks. The service requirements of different multimedia applications such as video streaming and Voice over IP (VoIP) are studied and some novel service-oriented networking solutions for supporting these applications in broadband wireless networks are proposed. The performance of these solutions is examined in WiMAX networks which are the promising technology for broadband wireless access in the near future. WiMAX networks are based on the IEEE 802.16 standards which have defined different Quality of Service (QoS) classes to support a broad range of applications with varying service requirements to mobile and stationary users.

The growth of multimedia traffic that requires special quality of service from the network will impose new constraints on network designers who should wisely allocate the limited resources to users based on their required quality of service. An efficient resource management and network design depends upon gaining accurate information about the traffic profile of user applications. In this dissertation, the access level traffic profile of VoIP applications are studied first, and then a realistic distribution model for VoIP traffic is proposed. Based on this model, an algorithm to allocate resources for VoIP applications in WiMAX networks is investigated. Later, the challenges and possible solutions for transmitting MPEG video streams in wireless networks are discussed. The MPEG traffic model adopted by the WiMAX Forum is introduced and different application-oriented solutions for enhancing the performance of wireless networks with respect to MPEG video streaming applications are explained. An analytical framework to verify the performance of the proposed solutions is discoursed, and it is shown that the proposed solutions will improve the efficiency of VoIP applications and the quality of streaming applications over wireless networks. Finally, conclusions are drawn and future works are discussed.

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