5th International ICST Conference on Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communities

Research Article

Experimental Study of Utility Function Selection for Video over IEEE 802.22 Wireless Regional Area Networks

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/TRIDENTCOM.2009.4976200,
        author={Youping Zhao and Shiwen Mao and Jeffrey H. Reed and Yingsong Huang},
        title={Experimental Study of Utility Function Selection for Video over IEEE 802.22 Wireless Regional Area Networks},
        proceedings={5th International ICST Conference on Testbeds and  Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communities},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={TRIDENTCOM},
        year={2010},
        month={5},
        keywords={},
        doi={10.1109/TRIDENTCOM.2009.4976200}
    }
    
  • Youping Zhao
    Shiwen Mao
    Jeffrey H. Reed
    Yingsong Huang
    Year: 2010
    Experimental Study of Utility Function Selection for Video over IEEE 802.22 Wireless Regional Area Networks
    TRIDENTCOM
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/TRIDENTCOM.2009.4976200
Youping Zhao1,*, Shiwen Mao2,*, Jeffrey H. Reed3,*, Yingsong Huang2,*
  • 1: Shared Spectrum Company, Vienna, VA 22182
  • 2: Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36839-5201
  • 3: The Bradley Dept. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061
*Contact email: yzhao@sharedspectrum.com, smao@ieee.org, reedjh@vt.edu, yzh0002@auburn.edu

Abstract

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a new wireless communications and networking paradigm that is enabled by the Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology and a recent change in spectrum regulation policy. As the first commercial application of CR technology, IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area networks (WRAN) aim to offer broadband wireless access by efficiently utilizing “white spaces” in the broadcast TV bands. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of an IEEE 802.22 WRAN base station (BS) cognitive engine (CE) testbed developed at Wireless@Virginia Tech on supporting video applications. We investigate the important problem of utility function selection and its impact on the received video quality. Through testbed experiments, we find that a video-specific utility function achieves significant improvements on received video quality over a general purpose utility function, indicating the efficacy of cross-layer design and more importantly, the need for adopting dynamic situation- and application-aware utility functions at the CE, rather than a predefined static one.