— This paper presents a novel cross-layer rate control scheme for optimizing 3D wavelet scalable video transmission over the IEEE 802.11e wireless local area networks. The proposed scheme consists of a macro and a micro rate control schemes residing at the application layer and the network sublayer respectively. The macro rate control uses bandwidth estimation to achieve optimal bit allocation with minimum distortion. The micro rate control employs an adaptive mapping of packets using video classifications. This prioritizes appropriately the video traffic to maximize the transmission protection to the important video packets. The performance is investigated by simulations showing advantages of our cross-layer design.