An embedded packet train and adaptive FEC scheme for VoIP over wired/wireless IP networks

Voice over IP (VoIP) has become the fastest growing wireless alternative to conventional telephony service by way of ongoing deployment of WLAN hotspots and even powerful WiMAX coverage. Resulting from the wired/wireless combined best-effort based heterogeneous IP networks which provide more fluctuation in available bandwidth and end-to-end delay, the performance of VoIP quality, especially using the handheld wireless devices, has been greatly degraded due to frequent packet loss and longer delays. This paper proposes a real-time embedded packet train probing scheme for estimating end-to-end available bandwidth so as to accomplish effective congestion control. By trading acceptable delays with adaptive packetization of voice bitstreams, as well as adaptive insertion of forward error correction (FEC) packets, an optimized system driven QoS approach for VoIP can thus be achieved.