Multimedia Application Performance on a WiMAX Network

In this paper, we use experimental measurements to study the performance of multimedia applications over a commercial IEEE 802.16 WiMAX network. Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and video streaming (RealPlayer) applications are tested. The WiMAX-based network solidly supports VoIP, providing adequate quality for short to medium duration calls. The voice quality degradation compared to high-speed Ethernet is only moderate, despite higher packet loss and network delays. The effects of the uplink and the downlink on call quality are comparable, despite their different characteristics. On-demand video streaming performs well using UDP. Smooth playback of high-quality video/audio clips at aggregate rates exceeding 700 Kbps is achieved about 63% of the time, with low-quality playback periods observed only 7% of the time. Our results show that WiMAX networks can adequately support currently popular multimedia Internet applications.