A beaconless Opportunistic Routing based on a cross-layer approach for efficient video dissemination in mobile multimedia IoT applications

Mobile multimedia networks are enlarging the Internet of Things (IoT) portfolio with a huge number of multimedia services for different applications. Those services run on dynamic topologies due to device mobility or failures and wireless channel impairments, such as mobile robots or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) environments for rescue or surveillance missions. In those scenarios, beaconless Opportunistic Routing (OR) allows increasing the robustness of systems for supporting routing decisions in a completely distributed manner. Moreover, the addition of a cross-layer scheme enhances the benefits of a beaconless OR, and also enables multimedia dissemination with Quality of Experience (QoE) support. However, existing beaconless OR approaches do not support a reliable and efficient cross-layer scheme to enable effective multimedia transmission under topology changes, increasing the packet loss rate, and thus reducing the video quality level based on the user’s experience. This article proposes a Link quality and Geographical beaconless OR protocol for efficient video dissemination for mobile multimedia IoT, called LinGO. This protocol relies on a beaconless OR approach and uses multiple metrics for routing decisions, including link quality, geographic location, and energy. A QoE/video-aware optimisation scheme allows increasing the packet delivery rate in presence of links errors, by adding redundant video packets based on the frame importance from the human’s point-of-view. Simulation results show that LinGO delivers live video flows with QoE support and robustness in mobile and dynamic topologies, as needed in future IoT environments.