Traffic Prioritization of H.264/SVC Video Over 802.11e Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

The H.264/SVC video codec extends the H.264/AVC standard with scalability features. In this paper the authors introduce a traffic prioritization algorithm suitable for the transmission of both H.264/SVC and H.264/AVC video over 802.11e ad hoc wireless networks. The proposed algorithm exploits the traffic prioritization capabilities offered by 802.11e to provide better protection to the most perceptually important parts of a video while achieving efficient network resource usage. The authors evaluate the algorithm by simulating video transmissions in an ad hoc network scenario. Results show that the H.264/SVC codec particularly benefits from the proposed algorithm, which enables graceful video quality degradation in congested network conditions, as well as PSNR gains up to 2 dB with respect to the H.264/AVC codec using the same amount of network resources.