A deterministic channel access scheme for multimedia streaming in WiMedia networks

Abstract

WiMedia MAC is an attractive transmission technology for high rate multimedia streaming and high quality consumer electronic devices in wireless personal area networks. In this paper, we propose a deterministic channel access (DCA), where all the devices determine their transmission orders in a distributed manner by exchanging beacon frames in the beacon period. Since all of the devices follow a deterministic transmission order, collision-free channel access can be achieved and thus the throughput can be significantly improved. In addition, the DCA addresses unfairness problems found in channel access by using circulating reference points. The trace-driven simulation results demonstrate that the DCA outperforms the existing channel access schemes in WiMedia MAC under different situations, especially under bursty traffic.