Self-configured multipath routing using path lifetime for video-streaming services over Ad Hoc networks

The increasing spread of mobile nodes along with the technical advances in multi-hop MANETs (Mobile Ad hoc NETworks) makes this kind of networks an important type of access network of next generation. The demand of multimedia services from these networks is expected to significantly grow in the next years. Multimedia services, though, require the provision of Quality of Service (QoS). Nevertheless, the highly dynamic nature of MANETs, the energy constraints, the lack on centralized infrastructure and the variable link capacity, makes the QoS provision over MANETs a matter that challenges attention. These features make self-configuration and system adaptation questions of major importance when developing a QoS-aware framework. To tackle this issue, we have designed a-MMDSR (adaptive-Multipath Multimedia Dynamic Source Routing), a multipath routing protocol able to self-configure dynamically depending on the state of the network. The approach includes cross-layer techniques especially designed to improve the end-to-end performance of video-streaming services over IEEE 802.11e Ad Hoc networks. Besides, a straightforward analytical model to estimate the path error probability is presented. This model is used by the routing scheme to estimate the lifetime of the paths. In this way, proper proactive decisions can be made before the paths get broken. The model simplicity is appropriate for low capacity wireless devices. Simulation results validate the proposal and show the improvement on standard DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) and on a previous static version.