Homeplug-AV CSMA/CA Cross-Layer Extension for QoS Improvement of Multimedia Services

This letter proposes a cross-layer extension of the CSMA/CA protocol used in the Power-line Communications standard HomePlug-AV. Its main goal is to allocate more bandwidth to nodes with QoS needs by giving them more channel access opportunities. An easy way to do this is by appropriately modifying the contention window size of the participants. The presented protocol considers both the QoS requirements of the upper-layer services and the physical layer restrictions. It is mathematically modeled and evaluated by means of a realistic simulator in an in-home scenario, showing that it significantly improves the system performance compared to the standard version of the protocol and to any other previously presented extension.