ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been an increasing demand to deliver highquality, high-bandwidth video streaming services over IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs). However, streaming over wireless networks presents a number of unique challenges compared to delivery over wired networks. In particular, the end-to-end perceived video quality can fluctuate vastly due to the higher-channel bit error rate (BER), fading, interference, and end-host mobility, among other reasons. This chapter examines the state-of-the-art in supporting high-quality video streaming services over IEEE 802.11 wireless networks and, particularly, focuses on introducing the latest advances in video streaming designs that use approaches assisted by peer-to-peer (P2P) concepts. The problem is first approached by evaluating other existing methods of streaming video content over IEEE 802.11 WLAN. Next, the design details for peer-assisted streaming schemes are explored, which entail content discovery, mobility tracking, peer selection, node caching, and energy efficiency. The chapter concludes by identifying some open research issues in the implementation of the peer-assisted streaming schemes.
