WLAN Protocol and Network Architecture Selection for Real-time Applications

Wireless networks have been designed to provide provision for real-time applications such as voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing (VC). Evaluate the QoS metrics of real-time services for different IEEE 802.11 technologies in order to identify the optimum technology standard across different infrastructure and network architectures. In this paper, an algorithm scheme is proposed to evaluate real-time services of different IEEE 802.11 technologies in order to identify the optimum network architecture among Basic Service Set (BSS), Extended Service Set (ESS), and the Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS). Moreover, the proposed algorithm considers multi-criteria access network selection such as spatial distribution and number of nodes, hence to facilitate the provision of the best overall network performance and high quality services. The Quality of Service (QoS) metrics used were delay, jitter, throughput and packet loss.