Position-Based Multipath Routing Protocol for Multimedia Streaming in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Supporting multimedia applications over mobile ad hoc networks is a challenging issue. This paper proposes a Position-based Multipath Routing Protocol (PMRP) for real-time multimedia streaming in mobile ad hoc networks. We present an alternative path selection strategy to alleviate packet loss when primary route breaks. On the other hand, two different flood schemes are deployed in the process of route establishment, used for both multimedia traffic and other traffic. The purpose is to lower the overall route overhead. Multimedia traffic is assigned a high priority to find multiple paths, while non-multimedia traffic uses unipath. Our simulation results demonstrate that the PMRP improves the performance of multimedia streaming significantly, in terms of the decodable frames ratio, average frame delay, delay jitter, normalized packet load, route overhead, etc.