AN INTEGRATED TESTBED FOR WIRELESS MULTIMEDIA COMPUTING

A testbed has been constructed to evaluate node architectures that sup port multimedia applications and services across a wireless network. U sing this testbed, a low bitrate subband video compression algorithm h as been prototyped in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and evalu ated for video networking across bandwidth-limited RF channels. A radi o interface has been prototyped in an FPGA and a common applications p rogramming interface (API) has been developed to allow experimentation with multiple radios. This testbed has been used to evaluate node per formance under two different wireless applications: 1) simultaneous vi deo and data networking (VTALK) and 2) TCP/IP utilities such as FTP an d telnet. Based on this evaluation, the design of a battery-operated h igh throughput wireless multimedia node is presented.