In this paper, we study the performance of a combined link- and physical-layer approach for the downlink of a dynamic OFDM-frequency division multiple access transmission system delivering MPEG-4 video streams. The approach consists of three different mechanisms-queue management, resource allocation, and subcarrier assignment-which can be used separately as well as in combination. This crosslayer approach allows to utilize channel-related knowledge and semantic information of the streams packets. Consecutively adding these mechanisms to the studied system, we judge their respective impact on system performance. To do so, we present a new metric for quality assessment of long video transmissions (considerably longer than 10 s) and apply it to the simulation results. In particular, we introduce a local distortion threshold-based metric instead of an overall average judgment. We find that our combined system approach increases the number of supportable terminals per cell by up to 300%. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
