Abstract

These services have become popular amid the flood of real-time Internet applications (such as video streaming, online gaming, and voice-over IP (VoIP)). An increase in demand for low-latency, high-throughput, and reliable communication has accompanied this. The central part of this problem is the MAC (Medium Access Control) layer, which controls channel access and provides Quality of Service (QoS). This paper is a comprehensive survey of the most popular MAC protocols that factor in real-time multimedia traffic. Protocols that work with IEEE 802.11 DCF, EDCA, and TDMA have been studied. The evaluation was performed through simulations in the conditions of different network load levels and variations in traffic patterns based on critical quality of service measures of end-to-end delay, jitter, throughput, and loss rate. The simulation results showed an increase in multimedia traffic compared to basic DCF, but performance decreased under congestion. Deterministic TDMA algorithms are more efficient. The inflexibility of dynamically changing environments, however, is a challenge. In this work, the overlapping of divergent adaptive or hybrid MAC-based solutions is a promising direction for future research. The diversity of proposed solutions can help engineers develop MAC protocols to address the challenges posed by real-time multimedia applications over the Internet.