Improving end-to-end quality-of-service in online multi-player wireless gaming networks

In this paper, we present a novel, scalable multi-player gaming architecture that can incorporate mobile nodes. Next we propose an adaptive forward error correction (FEC) and rate-control technique to improve service quality in such a wireless gaming environment. We consider only last-hop wireless links in this paper. It is assumed that the game server and clients (mobile devices) can switch between different prediction levels having different data rates. We introduce a new scheme for estimating the packet loss rates due to congestion and wireless channel conditions and use this information in a cross-layer design to improve the overall service quality. The congestion packet loss probability is used to devise a simple TCP-friendly rate-control algorithm for sending downlink data packets from the game server. We also propose a novel adaptive FEC and dynamic packetization algorithm to alleviate the effects of wireless channel packet losses based on this chosen data rate. Extensive NS-2 simulation results show the efficacy of our scheme in achieving higher throughput.