CROSS LAYER DESIGN IN HETEROGENEOUS NETWORK FOR QOS SUPPORT

1. INTRODUCTION
Cross-Layer design has been the focus of several recent research efforts. Due to the highly variable nature of the links used in wireless communication systems and the resource-poor nature of the wireless mobile devices, there have been multiple research efforts to improve the performance of the protocol stack by allowing cross-layer interaction in wireless systems. Cross-layer interaction means allowing communication of a layer with any other possibly non-adjacent layer in the protocol stack. Several issues related to the cross-layer design paradigm need to be addressed before it can achieve its promises. One of these issues is to have a well defined framework that manages the interaction between the different layers of the protocol stack, such that the modularity of the stack is preserved while still achieving the flexibility and adaptability which cross-layer design promises.

This seminar addresses this issue by proposing a cross-layer coordination framework for next generation wireless systems. The proposed framework enables the interaction between non-adjacent layers in a systematic organized way while preserving the modularity of each layer. We believe that the existence of such a framework will ease the development of cross-layer design schemes.

Figure : OSI Protocol Stack

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The OSI Protocol stack consists of seven distinct modules, each with its own distinct characteristics and functionality. The modularity of the stack makes it easy to change the implementation of the service provided by each layer .Communication between adjacent layers is performed by sending messages (packets) down through the stack. As a packet arrives at each layer, relative information is retrieved or added. The packet is then encapsulated and forwarded to the next layer.

The basis of this modular structure states that each separate layer is able to solve specific problems by extending the lower layer services and providing a new service to the upper layers. Therefore, only adjacent layers are able to communicate and valuable resources and time are wasted encapsulating and relaying information through all the layers. However, due to the varying channel conditions of wireless networks, the heterogeneous networks require that IP-based networks provide the necessary Quos requirements to real-time applications. A new NGN approach has been suggested, known as the Cross Layer architecture. It has been introduced to cater for the 4G networks and their increased Quos requirements. This simple framework allows inter-layer communication between non-adjacent layers of the OSI Protocol stack. Bandwidth-hungry applications can use this new design to achieve priority in the network during resource allocation and easily acquire their required bandwidth. This architecture has been designed to alleviate the time and resource wastage encountered when using the strictly-layered OSI protocol architecture.

2. LITERATURE SURVEY
Wireless communication poses many challenges as follows. High packet loss rate and bit error rate (BER): In the wireless network, packet losses are usually caused by congestion in the network routers. On the other hand, the wireless channels are typically much nosier and have both multipath and shadowing fades, thus making the bit error rate very high. The resulting packet losses and bit errors can have devastating effect on quality. To overcome residual BER, error resilience of Video/Audio code is usually required. Moreover, error control techniques such as Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Automatic Repeat request (ARQ) are necessary to ensure high-quality media transmission. Of these two error control mechanisms, FEC has been commonly suggested for realtime applications due to the strict delay requirements and semi reliable nature of media streams. ARQ has been shown to be more effective than FEC. But retransmission of corrupted data frames introduces additional delay, which is critical for real-time services.
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Bandwidth limitation and fluctuations: It is known that the throughput of a wireless channel may be reduced due to multipath fading, co-channel interference, and noise disturbances. The capacity of a wireless channel may fluctuate with the changing distance between the base station and the mobile host. In the meanwhile, the network provides best-effort service and it does not provide Quos (Quality of Service) guarantee for services. Specifically, network conditions and characteristics such as bandwidth, packet loss ratio, delay, and delay jitter vary from time to time. Considering the bandwidth fluctuation, it is important to estimate the available bandwidth dynamically. Throughput calculation, bandwidth probing, packet pair are several popular techniques for bandwidth measurement .

Considering the bandwidth limitation, especially for wireless channel, it is essential to improve the bandwidth utilization. It is known RTP/UDP/IP and TCP/IP have the problem of the large header overhead on bandwidth-limited links. Header compression has been proven to be efficient for using those protocols. Unfortunately, existing header compression schemes do not work well on noisy links, especially the one with high bit error rate and long roundtrip time. Low performances for traditional transport-layer protocols: It is known that traditional transport layer protocol assumes congestion in the network to be the primary cause for packet losses and unusual delay. It will decrease the transmitting rate in the case of packet lost. Unfortunately, packets are lost in wireless channel due to channel error rather than congestion, thereby resulting in an unnecessary reduction in end-to-end throughput. For wireless network itself, both the high BER and frequently occurred fading make packet loss ratio very high during a TCP/UDP connection. Many works have been made to overcome the drawbacks of transport protocols over wireless networks. Different Quos requirements for different types of data: In general, different kinds of media have different characteristics. Real-time media such as video or audio is delay sensitive but capable of tolerating certain degree of errors. Non-real-time media such as Web data is less delay sensitive but requires reliable transmission. Consequently, unequal error control and priority-based scheduling schemes are needed for different types of media.

Cross layer communication framework helps different kinds of protocols to communicate with each other without knowing the protocol or system architecture specification. It maintains a parameter repository to manage the data format that these layers accept or produce. Cross layer
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manager manages and co-ordinates the communication among different protocols by sending and receiving the event messages between different types of protocols. The below figures such a cross layer framework representation where the cross layer manages the communication between different types of protocols by sending and receiving the event messages and using the state variables.

Figure : cross layer design for different transmission protocols While the standard TCP/IP stack has worked well for wired links, it suffers from bad performance when used over wireless links. When compared with wired links, wireless links in general have lower bandwidths available, higher transmission delays, and higher BERs, and suffer from channel fading. There is not much that can be done at the protocol stack level to work around the first two problems, and users learn to live with these limitations. Unfortunately, transport protocols suffer severely from the consequences of the last two problems. Again, the widely used TCP protocol is the primary example of this situation. On one hand, erroneous datagrams are automatically dropped by the link layer, while TCP always interprets losses as a congestion signal. Thus, the TCP congestion control algorithm decreases (usually by half) the congestion window and enters the congestion avoidance state, where the congestion window grows linearly. The net result is a significant reduction in effective performance, which the user does not understand, knowing the advertised bandwidth of the network interface card. On the other hand, wireless links often experience channel fading effects, consisting of fluctuation of the channel capacity over time. We can distinguish between slow and fast fading according to its duration, which is usually related to the speed of a mobile node's movement. Although fast channel fading has little impact on the performance of TCP, when slow channel fading occurs several consecutive TCP packets are
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dropped. Thus, TCP congestion control will inevitably and quickly lower the congestion window to its minimum value. Unfortunately, due to the multiplicative decrease additive increase property of congestion avoidance the congestion window is very slow to return to its original value therefore fading occurred. Once more, the net result is a decrease .in effective throughput and, consequently, underutilization of resources.

The future of mobile communication is heading towards ubiquitous Next Generation (NGN) heterogeneous or 4G Networks. The 4G networks are intended to cater to seamless and fast handover between applications to be used anywhere, at any time, using different access technologies. There is an increased demand for faster, seamless and cheaper multimedia delivery over the wireless Internet. The Next Generation wireless Networks will have an all IP-based architecture to support this heterogeneity. Currently, the foundation of these heterogeneous networks is based on a strict layered architecture referred to as the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) Protocol stack. However, this OSI Protocol stack presents various bottlenecks to the performance of real-time applications over the Internet. Consequently, a different approach, called Cross Layer Design has been introduced to optimize the performance of the Quality of Service (QOS) of these applications. This seminar discusses the basic OSI protocol stack and its need for modification.

Cross-Layer design has been the focus of several recent research efforts. Due to the highly variable nature of the links used in wireless communication systems and the resource-poor nature of the wireless mobile devices, there have been multiple research efforts to improve the performance of the protocol stack by allowing cross-layer interaction in wireless systems. Cross-layer interaction means allowing communication of a layer with any other possibly non-adjacent layer in the protocol stack. Several issues related to the cross-layer design paradigm need to be addressed before it can achieve its promises. One of these issues is to have a well defined framework that manages the interaction between the different layers of the protocol stack, such that the modularity of the stack is preserved while still achieving the flexibility and adaptability which cross-layer design promises. This seminar addresses this issue by proposing a cross-layer coordination framework for next generation wireless systems. The proposed framework enables the interaction between non-adjacent layers in a systematic organized way while preserving the modularity of each layer. We believe that the existence of such a framework will ease the development of cross-layer design schemes.

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3. KEY CHALLENGES
3.1 Real Time Application Requirements
Real-time applications have strict Qos constraints on bandwidth, delay and jitter. Although the OSI protocol has been in existence for over 20 years, advancing technology and use of multiple applications on the same protocol stack has led to increased bottlenecks in the performance of the protocol model. Some of the bottlenecks experienced are: increased energy consumption, unnecessary encapsulation and decapsulation, increased jitter and delay, unnecessary

retransmissions, reduced throughput and inability to meet different Quos requirements of different applications running on same protocol. This seminar discusses the implementation of the cross layer architecture to help speed up communication and provisioning of Quos requirements between the layers of the OSI protocol stack. It proposes an extension to the design of the existing internet OSI architecture that allows interaction between non-adjacent layers of the protocol stack. In particular, it focuses on end-to-end user delay, prioritization and per-user throughput for a VoIP application.

3.2 Cross Layer Design Architecture

Figure : overview of cross layer coordination framework Cross layer clients are added to each layer of the protocol stack to enable interaction with the server (Manager). Parameters that characterize each individual layer are relayed to the client which in turn communicates across the other layers through the cross layer server. When an event occurs through the signaling scheme, a request is made to the server for particular information. The server in turn relays relevant information to the particular layer making the request. This way, information can be transferred across non-adjacent layers through the cross layer server.

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Figure : Details of cross-layer coordination framework

In order to fully address all aspects of the framework, the following issues have to be discussed in detail.

A. Cross-layer Client (to be added to each layer of the traditional protocol stack to enable the cross-layer coordination operation) B. Cross-Layer Server C. Signaling Scheme (Event Messages) D. Adaptation Algorithms (reside in the cross-layer client)

Breaking the cross-layer framework into these four main blocks makes it easier to handle each required aspect of the framework independently and focus on its solution.

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A. The Cross-Layer Client The cross-layer client is the part which is added to each layer of the protocol stack to facilitate the cross-layer coordination functionality. The client communicates with other clients in other layers through the cross-layer server to achieve the required functionality. The cross-layer client consists of two major parts, namely: a. The Adaptation Module The adaptation module could be divided into three main parts: The adaptation algorithm itself. This is the logic and the implementation which solves a certain problem. It receives events from the server and sends events to it and can change the state variables of the layer it resides in. It communicates events to other layers through the server. The conversion of the received parameters from other layers into the form that the algorithm needs to operate on. The parameters from other layers which might be necessary for the proper operation of the algorithm.

b. Abstracted Layer State Each layer in the protocol stack could be viewed as a set of parameters. Depending on the value of these parameters, one can determine the overall state of the layer and determine its behavior (i.e. each layer could be abstracted in a set of parameters).

B. The Cross-Layer Server The cross-layer server resides outside the protocol stack to facilitate the cross-layer coordination functionality. It could be viewed as a service or part of the operating system. The cross layer server consists of two major modules, namely: a. Control Module The Control Module is divided into two parts: 1. The Action Module which takes the actions towards other layers, i.e. sends events to them in the form of Event Messages, or takes internal actions in response to a certain event received from a client.
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2. The Event Management Module which manages concurrent events and schedules which event to be handled first in the case of several events occurring at the same time. This form of scheduling should be easy and not time consuming; otherwise it will affect the performance of the system.

b. Parameter Management Module This Module consists of the Parameter Repository which is responsible for saving the parameters (abstracted state) of each layer in a suitable form for the other layers to access easily.

C . Signaling Scheme (Event Messages) As mentioned previously, the communication between different non-adjacent layers in the protocol stack happens through the cross-layer server. When an initiating layer wants to send a certain event to another target layer, the client of the initiating layer sends this event to the server, which forwards it to the target layer. The event message should be expressive enough to carry the necessary information from one layer to another. Different events could achieve different tasks, for example an event could be used to inform the server of a change of a parameter and report its new value. Another event could be used to request a certain parameter value from the server. The server could send events to the clients to request a certain action to be performed or request from the client a certain parameter value. An event is transmitted from a client to the server via an Event Message. An Event Message could contain one event or several events with or without associated parameters. Each event should have a priority to facilitate scheduling it among other events. Event parameters are optional (i.e. there could be an event without a parameter). Events should be encoded in a TLV (Type, Length, and Value) to facilitate the existence of several events per message.

3.3 What the Cross-Layer Designer needs to Specify

In order to utilize the proposed framework, the cross-layer protocol designer needs to specify following parts in the cross-layer framework:

1. The adaptation algorithm which will be implemented inside the client of a certain layer or several layers of the protocol stack. 2. The necessary events, their numbers, types, their parameters and the associated action with each event, which will be sent from a client to the server and vice versa.
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3. A priority policy for differentiating between different events in case they are all present at the same time at the server side. This policy should define which one to execute first when several events of different types are present

3.4 Cross layer design for voice and video applications.

Cross layer can be used for the bandwidth hungry application like voice, video or multimedia transmission where the jitter, delay many condition decide the Quos.

A. VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL VoIP is an interactive voice application that facilitates routing of voice conversations over the internet or any other internet protocol (IP)-based protocol. These protocols carry telephony signals as data packets. They are reduced in data rate using speech data compression techniques and encapsulated in a data stream over the Internet protocol. VoIP is location independent. Only an Internet connection to the VoIP provider is required.

Cross layer implementation is especially necessary when the channel is congested. This is when all the nodes are competing for the available bandwidth. As the sending rate-per-node increases, the available bandwidth in the channel decreases and congestion occurs. This design consists of an IEEE 802.11bWLAN network supporting various VoIP applications using a UDP/IP transport protocol. It involves interaction between the application, transport and MAC layers of the protocol stack. This proposed architecture is used to optimize two Quos requirements of real-time applications. These are: per-user throughput and end-to-end delay.

Cross layer interaction is created between the transport and the MAC layer of the VoIP application. The application layer relays to the transport layers its specifications (i.e. sending rate and required throughput). The transport layer directly contacts the MAC layer to relay the VoIP applications specifics, the type of packets being sent (CBR packets) and its priority status. At the MAC layer, a procedure is implemented such that if it detects that the sending rate of the priority application is much greater than the throughput received at the base station, the MAC layer increases its packet size by a pre-defined set number of bytes. When the sending rate of this application is much greater than the per-user throughput at the base station, this is an indication that the application is not being adequately served. It is therefore an indication that the channel is experiencing congestion. The MAC layer continues to increase the packet size after a set interval within bound
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until the transport layer relays to the MAC layer that the priority nodes throughput is at the required level. To exemplify the effectiveness of this design, consider a number of applications running over an 802.11b application using CSMA/CA. Each of the\ applications is waiting and listening for a slot to transmit its information.

Figure : Cross Layer Interaction between the MAC a Transport Layer.

Consider that each packet has 50 bytes of information. As the application using the cross layer realizes that the channel is getting congested, the transport layer of the VoIP application alerts the MAC layer of the need for prioritization to send information with minimal delay. The MAC layer, on receiving this information, increases its packet size to 100 bytes.

Hence, 100 bytes of VoIP are sent for half the contention period of the other competing applications. Therefore, more information is sent for half the time. The other applications will have to wait and listen two contention periods in order to send the same amount of information (50 bytes per contention period). By increasing the packet size of the application, the MAC layer gives this
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VoIP application increased priority. In addition to this, the CSMA/CA contention period of this application shows a marked decrease. More bytes of information are being sent to the base station for a shorter period of time than the applications using the normal OSI protocol layered stack mechanism. Accordingly, the per-user throughput of the VoIP application is improved despite the congested nature of the IEEE802.11b WLAN network.

VoIP data travels on a Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) over User Datagram Protocol (UDP). VoIP packets are very small with a payload of about 20 to 150 bytes. An RTP/UDP/IP header is exactly 40 bytes (IP = 20 bytes, UDP = 12 bytes, RTP = 8 bytes). Due to the high relation between the header size and the payload size, transmission of VoIP is inefficient. It is important to note, when transferring information using VoIP, the Quality of Service requirements of the application. The main constraints specified by VoIP are: delay, jitter, packet loss and throughput.

CARRIER SENSE MULTIPLE ACCESS/COLLISION AVOIDANCE Link adaption is a technique used to handle the effects caused by the changes in the channel condition. It is performed at the link or Media Access Control (MAC) layer. This technique is used to automatically adjust a number of radio/MAC parameters, so that optimal throughput is achieved. Cross layer signaling can be used to pass the information across the layers. The 802.11b family uses a MAC layer protocol called Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA). It is a peer-to peer Ethernet protocol that needs no master station. In CSMA/CA, if a node wants to transmit, it performs the following sequence

A node desiring to transmit listens to the channel. If the channel is busy (i.e. another node is transmitting), the node waits until transmission stops and then waits a further contention period (A contention period is a random period waited after every transmission on every node. It is approximately 20-50 ms).When it senses that the channel is free for a specified time (called the Distributed Inter Frame Space (DIFS)), the node is allowed to transmit. The DIFS is the Inter Frame Space used for a node that is willing to start a new transmission. It is usually 128 microseconds long.

SIMULATION SETUP Using a Network Simulation tool called NS-2, the topology for the cross layer interaction is set up. The various layers and their individual protocols are included in the nodes and cross layer
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interaction between the layers is effected as explained below.The basic topology consists of eleven wired nodes connected to a base station (access point). A base station is a wired gateway between wired and wireless domains. To measure the throughput at the base station, we attach a wired node to the base station using a large capacity lossless link. This wired node acts as the sink for the packets being sent from the wireless nodes to the base station. The wireless nodes represent the different real-time applications. Each wireless node represents a different user connected to the network using a specific application. To show the effect of cross layer architecture on the performance, a specific node is identified as the priority node. This priority node represents the end-user that requires priority service over the other users. It is given all the characteristics of a VoIP application. In this node, cross layer design method is implemented. The rest of the nodes in the network are also given all the characteristics of real-time applications. However, these non-priority nodes use the ordinary OSI Protocol stack adjacent layer communication.

Figure : Simulation Topology Setup An Agent is created at each wireless node. Each node is identified as a UDP Agent since realtime applications are throttled when TCP is used. The traffic is specified to be CBR traffic. The sending rate and packet size of each of the wireless nodes is then set to the same value. Each node gets the same initial characteristic. Packets are then sent from each of the eleven wireless nodes to the base station. This approach is used to ensure that all the nodes are given the same basic environment and channel conditions. It also ensures that there is no bias on measurement of results. The aggregate and per-user throughput of each node is measured at the base station and recorded using trace files in NS-2. The average end-user delay is also recorded.

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Assumptions A lossless wired link with a very large capacity is used to connect the base station to the wired node. The assumption is made that the throughput at the base station exactly matches the throughput at the wired node. The per user throughput, aggregate throughput and end-user delay are hence measured at the wired node. Also, as the congestion increases, the number of packets lost or dropped increases too. It is assumed that the number of packets dropped does not adversely affect the throughput o f any of the nodes.For accuracy of simulation results, eleven nodes are simulated and tested. However, for ease of presentation of results in this paper, only four nodes have been represented in the graphs. These include: three randomly chosen non-priority nodes and the sole priority node. USECASE For effective evaluation of the simulation results, they have been divided up into two different scenarios: before and after congestion. In each scenario, performance of the priority node that uses cross layer design is compared to other non-priority nodes that use the strictly modular OSI protocol stack. This helps to nullify any bias to the results. Per-user Throughput Scenario 1: Before Congestion In this scenario, there is no congestion detected in the link. The channel conditions are capable of supporting all the traffic passing through the link. All the nodes connected to the base station are able to transmit their packet information with ease. The sending rate of each of the nodes is set at 10 000 bps Mbps). (0.01

Figure: Throughput vs. time before saturation

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Figure above shows that all the nodes are able to attain maximum through put within minimal time of 30 seconds. No node requires or is given priority over the other nodes. The per-user through put of all the nodes is relatively equal to the sending rate i.e.0.01 Mbps. The low sending rate of each application ensures that the bandwidth is fairly shared by all the applications. There is also enough bandwidth left over to cater for other bandwidth hungry applications that may join the network. Since there is no congestion, the cross layer procedure at the link layer is not necessary and the VoIP priority application receives the same service as the rest of the nodes. Scenario 2: High congestion In this scenario, the sending rate of all the nodes is now set to 0.5 Mbps. The channel is battling to cater to all the applications and their requirements. The end-to-end delay of the participating applications increases drastically and the throughput per-user reduces considerably.

Figure: Throughput vs. time after saturation Figure is a clear illustration of the improved performance of the priority node over the non priority nodes. It is evident that the priority nodes through put increases to a value of 0.58 Mbps well above the sending rate of the application. However, the other non-priority nodes are greatly affected by the high congestion levels. In addition to this, they have to cater for the increased throughput of the priority node. The through put of the other nodes lowers to an average value of
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0.41 Mbps. However, the congestion does affect the priority node to some extent as its time to reach maximum throughput increases to a value of 150s. End-to-end Delay Scenario 1: Before Congestion This scenario remains the same as explained above. The sending rate of each node is set to a value of 10 000 bps (0.01 Mbps). At this rate, all the nodes are freely transmitting their information. There is enough bandwidth on the link to cater for\ all the nodes simultaneously. The total

bandwidth for all the nodes (0.11 Mbps) is much lower than the total capacity of the link. This is approximated to be 4.5 Mbps. Figure 7 below shows the end-to-end user delays experienced by both the priority nodes and non priority nodes collectively.

Figure: Delay vs. time before saturation Fig above shows that the end-user delay for\ the priority node is relatively the same as the average delay for the non-priority nodes. This is due to the fact that there is no contention for bandwidth so all the nodes are transmitting data at the designated sending rate. Scenario 2: After Congestion In this scenario, the nodes are all competing for the available bandwidth. The sending rate of each node is set to a high value of 0.5 Mbps. The overall capacity of all the nodes is much greater
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than the total capacity of the link. As contention for this bandwidth increases, the priority node states its need for prioritization above the other nodes.

Figure : Delay vs. time with congestion Fig. above shows that the end to end delay increases for the non-priority nodes. However, the end-user delay for the priority node remains below 200 milliseconds according to the required QoS requirements for end-to end delay stated in Table I above. This is an indication that the cross layer approach suggested here is effective in areas of high congestion. There is a marked reduction in enduser delay.

B. VIDEO APPLICATIONS The following figures show the event messages and the flow chart to explain the video communication using the cross layer design framework.

This section illustrates how the framework is used in the case of the transmission of video over a wireless channel using cross layer operation. Seminar discuses a transmission scheme for real time video over wireless which utilizes cross-layer interaction between the physical layer and the video application layer. In their proposal, the physical layer determines the number of bits that it can transmit each coherence period. This Information is supplied to the video application which adapts its transmission based on that number to achieve the best performance.

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Figure : Event message structure

Figure : Adaptation algorithm for video application

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The technique makes use of combined Progressive Group of Pictures (PGOP) and Fine Grained Scalable (FGS) video to adapt the video transmission to the wireless channel. The FGS video is a two layered scheme comprising a base layer (BL) and an enhancement layer (EL). With the PGOP scheme, the BL rate can be maintained close to a predetermined constant. The BL guarantees an acceptable video quality. The EL can be received even partially. The reception of additional EL bits can only increase the video quality. FGS is used in the proposal due to its flexibility of arbitrary bit rate truncation at the EL . This is utilized as an advantage to adapt to the fluctuating channel capacity. In the proposed cross-layer solution for rate control, the encoder does not vary the transmission rate every coherence period. The encoder provides all the frame bits in a buffer in a continuous fashion for the packetization process to truncate.

The packetization process will choose the maximal number of bits to transmit based on the feedback from the physical layer in each coherence period and will truncate the remaining bits. The packetizer does not have to know the semantics of the data that needs to be truncated as arbitrary truncation of FGS video is possible. The packetizer selects only the necessary bits from the beginning of the buffer and truncates the rest. The packetizer chooses only the transportable number of bits minus the lower layer packet overhead (headers of lower layers) of the layers below it. The total number of bits available at the physical layer for transport after including packetization would be the exact number of transportable bits for that coherence period. This scheme provides real-time rate adaptation for every coherence period.

We use this application as an example of how our cross-layer framework could be used to allow cross-layer coordination. The requirement in this case is that the client of the physical layer needs to inform the client of the video application the number of bits which it can transmit during each coherence period. This corresponds to an event that the physical layer needs to send to the video application via the cross-layer framework. This event is transported in an Event Message which would be in the form shown in Figure . The message carries one event which is the number of bits that the channel state allows to be transmitted during the next coherence period denoted by X. The event priority is high, since if the video application does not receive this number it will not be able to construct the video packet in the correct form. There could be a default value which is the minimum value which corresponds to only accommodate the BL bits. The cross-layer server upon receiving this message from the physical layer client determines its event type. The management module in the server then decides to forward the event to the video application. Thus another message from the server to the client of the video application is needed. This message has the same type and format as
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the one between the physical layer client and the cross-layer server. The client in the video application receives this event and starts performing the adaptation algorithm which is shown in Figure. The operation of the algorithm is very simple, the algorithm drops a number of bits from the buffer filled by the video encoder so that the remaining number of bits is equal to the number supplied by the physical layer minus the overhead of lower layer protocols (RTP, UDP, IP and Link layer headers). Note that the demonstration of the adaptation algorithm does not take into account the occurrence of an error that prevents the event from reaching the video application. Several strategies could be used to solve this issue, for example sending the BL bits only or sending the same number of bits as the last packet, or having a weighted average of the sizes of several previously transmitted packets.

In this case no policy is required for determining how this event should be handled in the case of the existence of other events at the same time. An example of such a policy would be if the physical layer sends the event fading_start, which indicates that a sudden fade has occurred in the wireless channel, meaning that the channel is inaccessible, in this case it should be forwarded to the video application which should in turn drop the packet it was constructing. The abstracted layer state of the video application contains the encoding rate that the video is using and the number of bits in the BL and EL and any additional information for example the encoding algorithm used.

The parameter repository in the cross-layer server in this case will be used to store the base rate of the BL at which the video application is sending and the maximum rate corresponding to BL + EL. It also is used to store the values that the physical layer reported for the previous coherence periods.

4.FURURE SCOPE
In this seminar we have presented an overview of recent advances in the area of cross-layer design. We identified an essential issue that we believe is crucial to the success of the cross-layer design scheme. This issue is the existence of an organized framework which defines how the nonadjacent layers communicate.

Future work includes investigating the impact of implementing several other cross-layer adaptation algorithms under the same framework and qualitatively assessing the performance of the framework and applications under such operation.
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5. CONCLUSIONS
The results above reveal that this proposed Cross Layer architecture is indeed an effective means of reducing the end-to-end delay experienced by giving priority to a VoIP or video or multimedia application over the non-priority applications on request and reducing its contention period. Reduction of this contention period facilitates a reduction in overall end-to-end delay between the source and of the application. In addition, this design method is effective in increasing the per-user throughput of the application. As more bytes per packet are transmitted during the allocated transmission time, the overall per-user throughput of the prioritized application increases greatly. The effectiveness of this design is more evident during periods of high congestion when all the applications are struggling to utilize the available bandwidth of the channel. In the event that all the nodes: priority and non-priority used this proposed design, the overall throughput would be increased and end-to-end delay per user decreased due to the increase in packet size and reduction of contention period for each application. Cross Layer architecture is therefore a more effective and easier means of provisioning Qos requirements to real-time applications.

REFERENCES
1. Qian Zhang, Fan Yang, and Wenwu Zhu, Cross-Layer Quos Support for Multimedia Delivery over Wireless Internet EURASIP Journal on Applied SignalProcessing. Volume 2005 , pp 207 219, January 2005 2. ustavo Carneiro, Jose Ruela, and Manuel Ricardo, Cross Layer Design in 4G Wireless Terminals, IEEE Wireless Communications, Volume: 11, Issue 2, pp 7-13, Apr 2004. 3. James F. Kurose, Keith W. Ross Computer Networking. A top down approach featuring the Internet 3rd Edition 2005 4. Deeya Shakti Nursimloo, A two layered mobility support architecture: Fast Mobile IPv6 and Session Initiation Protocol, Masters thesis, University of Cape Town, 2006. 5. http://www.zytrax.com/tech/wireless/802_mac.htm - Retrieved on April 28, 2009 6. Karim M. El Defrawy, Magda S. El Zarki, and Mohamed M. Khairy, Proposal for a CrossLayer Coordination Framework for Next Generation Wireless Systems, Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Wireless communications and mobile computing, pp. 141146, Vancourver, 2006. 7. http://sss-mag.com/pdf/802_11tut.pdf Retrieved on 30 June, 2009
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8. Arulsaravana Jeyaraj, Liang Cheng, Magda El Zarki. Proposal for a Cross Layer scheme for Real Time Wireless Video. In preparation, April, 2006. 9. Carneiro, G.; Ruela, J.; Ricardo, M. Cross-Layer Design in 4G Wireless Terminals. IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine. Volume 11, Issue 2, Apr. 2004 Page(s):7 13.

10.Haitao Zheng. Optimizing wireless multimedia transmissions through cross layer design.
IEEE Proceedings of International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, 2003(ICME '03). Volume 1, 6-9 July 2003 Page(s):I - 185-8 Vol.1.

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