Adaptive Split Transmission for Video Streams in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks hold great promise in the wireless transmission of video flows, particularly if the problem of providing sufficient network capacity can be addressed. For this reason, schemes which help to address this difficulty in capacity-limited wireless networks are of great interest. This paper presents a novel and simple algorithm, adaptive split transmission algorithm, for achieving real-time, and quality-guaranteed video transmission in wireless mesh networks. The algorithm utilizes the unused capacities of multiple channels rather than trying to transmit the flow over just one overloaded channel. The flow is efficiently split into several sub-flows in a capacity-aware manner, each sub-flow then being transmitted through different channels in parallel. The adaptive split transmission algorithm controls flows dynamically in response to changes in the states of the available channels, thereby avoiding the overloading of any one channel. We evaluate the algorithm through simulations. The results show that the adaptive split transmission algorithm achieves synchronized, quality-guaranteed, and real-time wireless video transmission. The proposed algorithm can be used for interactive real-time wireless video applications without changing current wireless hardware, MAC protocols and upper-layer protocols.