Performance Optimization of Single-Cell Voice Over WiFi Communications Using Quantitative Cross-Layering Analysis

Cross-layer design has been proposed to optimize the performance of networks by exploiting the inter-relation among parameters and procedures at different levels of the protocol stack. This may be particularly beneficial in wireless scenarios, and for quality-of-service support. This paper proposes a quantitative study of cross-layer performance optimization for Voice over Wi-Fi communications, which enables design engineers to analyze and quantify interlayer dependencies and to identify the optimal operating point of the system, by using cost-benefit principles. Furthermore, insight gained on the problem enables the proposal of design principles for a Call Admission Control scheme able to enhance the overall system performance by limiting the number of users in the system and signaling to the active terminals of the proper parameter settings to optimize overall performance.