Provisioning Multimedia QoS in Wireless Networks- The Meta-Analysis Iffat Ahmed Department of Computer Science Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Pakistan imiffatt@hotmail.com M. A. Ansari Department of Computer Science Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science & Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan drmaansari@fuuastisb.edu.pk Abstract: Providing Quality of Service for multimedia contents in wireless networks is the hot issue among recent researches. Most of the work already has been done in this field but no such article provides conclusive results. This is the major motivation to do Meta–analysis research in this field, to provide some conclusive results based upon previous knowledge base. Thirty-six journal articles have been selected and reviewed, the subject area found are: Call Admission & Control, Bandwidth Management, Resource Reservation/Allocation, Cross-Layer Design, Routing and Traffic Management. The research models, methodologies, variables and subject area, used by each article are identified. Finally results have been concluded on the basis of this knowledge base. On the basis of these results the new framework is proposed, which would be helpful for upcoming researcher to initiate the research in the field of wireless network to provide QoS for multimedia contents. Keywords: Quality of Service, Wireless Networks, Multimedia, Meta- Analysis and Framework I. INTRODUCTION: Wireless is an omnipresent technology, and is a universal remedy. Wireless communication brings fundamental changes to data networking and Telecommunications. To relay information to and from our computer, wireless network uses radio waves instead of cables. Due to high speed Internet and Multimedia applications, future wireless communication are expected to support multimedia traffic such as voice, video and text with a variety of Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and make efficient use of radio resources. An important issue in wireless networks related to QoS is the support for Multimedia Services; many scheduling strategies have been developed to carry out multimedia traffic. [1] Focus on managing downlink traffic in both wireless ATM and WiFi scenarios, referring to an infrastructure wireless access network where a central coordinator takes scheduling decisions for the mobile users in its cell. Many different protocols are introduced to provide assured QoS multimedia traffic. [2] Uses the embedded Markov chain and supplementary variable methods and obtained the queue- length distribution as well as the loss probability and the mean waiting time for each type of customer. The objective of this paper is to develop taxonomy of how different researchers are providing QoS in wireless networks since the last decade considering different aspects based upon literature review. II. TAXONOMY OF SUBJECTS: Different subject areas related to QoS provisioning for Multimedia in Wireless Networks are identified and examined how researchers use them. These subject areas are listed in Table 1. Furthermore, all the research papers are examined and sorted out according to the usage of models, variables and research methodologies. The taxonomy of models and research methodology is depicted from [3]. A. Call Admission Control (CAC) The call admission control scheme is able to provide statistical QoS guarantees for real-time and streaming traffic. [4] Proposes CARC (Call Admission & Rate Control) scheme. In CAC the first criterion is to admit a new real-time flow only if the requested resource is available and the second criterion is that the QoS provided for the currently existing real-time flows is not affected. The rate control (RC) scheme must also ensure two things. First, it should not affect the QoS level of the admitted real-time traffic. Second, best effort traffic should have access to the Number Subject Area 1 Call admission Control (CAC) 2 Bandwidth Allocation / Reservation 3 Resource Allocation / Reservation 4 Cross-Layer Design 5 Routing 6 Traffic Management TABLE – 1 QoS provisioning Subject Areas Taxonomy