Performance Characterization of Wireless Multimedia through Heterogeneous Terrestrial-Satellite Network

In this work the transmission of multimedia services through heterogeneous integrated terrestrialsatellite networks is analyzed by means of measurement on a real test-bed including a video on demand (VoD) server, an IEEE802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) integrated with a wired LAN, and a geostationary Ka-band satellite link in service at the Telecommunication Laboratory at IEIIT-BO/CNR, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. At first the WLAN radio link is characterized in terms of the mean received power level for different terminal locations within the Lab. Secondary, MPEG-1 video streams are transmitted with different datarate from the VoD server to many wireless stations and the traffic, for both the single source and the aggregated traffic, is characterized. An integrated terrestrial-satellite LAN is simulated as an example of utilization of source characterization. Moreover, the quality of service in terms of the average dropped MPEG frames-to-transmitted frames ratio is measured for different channel conditions, data-rate, and the number of wireless terminals requiring the service.