Dynamic framework with adaptive contention window and multipath routing for video-streaming services over mobile ad hoc networks

Abstract

The number of portable electronic devices capable of maintaining wireless communications increases day by day. Such mobile nodes may easily self-configure to form a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) without the help of any established infrastructure. As the number of mobile devices grows, the demand of multimedia services such as video-streaming from these networks is foreseen to increase as well. This paper presents a proposal which seeks to improve the experience of the end users in such environment. The proposal is called dCW-MMDSR (dynamic Contention Window-Multipath Multimedia Dynamic Source Routing), a cross-layer multipath routing protocol which includes techniques to achieve a dynamic assignment of the Contention Window of the IEEE 802.11e MAC level. In addition, it includes multipath routing suitable for layered coded video to improve the performance of the service. The operation is simple and suitable for low capacity wireless devices. Simulations show the benefits under different scenarios.