Quality of Service Support in Multimedia Wireless Environments

This chapter discusses the quality of service (QoS) support in multimedia wireless environment. It explores that with careful operating system (OS) design with respect to scheduling and dynamic voltage scaling, the deadline guarantees for wireless multimedia applications as well as energy efficiency of mobile nodes to extend the application lifetime can be achieved. The chapter discusses two cross-layer networking architectures that support statistical bandwidth and delay guarantees in cooperative wireless single-hop environments. The bandwidth management architecture realizes the IntServ QoS model, while the proportional delay differentiation architecture realizes the DiffServ model. The chapter explores that by leveraging the cross-layer design principle, both of them can achieve different levels of QoS protection and are suitable in many situations in wireless networks. Wireless networks are at the critical junction of being widely accepted into everyday life by the proliferation of small wireless devices, such as smart phones, as well as the maturation of voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software.