Optimized path selection in a game-theoretic routing protocol for video-streaming services over MANETs

Abstract

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are infrastructureless networks formed by wireless mobile devices. Recently, the demand over multimedia services such as video streaming has increased specially since the number of mobile end users is growing as well. MPEG-2 VBR is one of the most fitting video coding techniques for MANETs which improves the distribution of video streams specially when it is used with a proper multipath routing scheme. In this article, we aimed to design a routing scheme to dynamically select the forwarding paths using a game-theoretic approach over a multipath routing protocol. Our proposal seeks to describe an equation of the probability p of sending video frames through the best available path. p depends on network parameters that vary throughout time. The aim is that the most important video frames (I+P) will be sent through the best path with a certain probability p and will be sent through the second best path with a probability 1-p. To achieve that, we carried out simulations done with fixed values of p and after that we applied a lineal regression method to obtain the coefficients of the equation for p. Simulations have been done to show the benefits of our proposal where interfering traffic and mobility of the nodes are present.