ETXMULT: A routing metric for multimedia applications in wireless mesh networks

In a near future, wireless mesh networks (WMNs) and multimedia content will be abundant technologies/applications in the Internet. Hence, in order to keep and attract new customers, as well as, reduce operational costs, the development of new quality level control schemes are needed and it is one of the key requirements for the success of next generation wireless multimedia systems. With this goal in mind, this paper presents a new routing metric with focused on estimation error on wireless links, named ETXMULT (Expected Transmission Count for Multimedia Content), to assure high-quality paths on multi-hop wireless networks for multimedia traffic. Simulations were carried out, by using Network Simulator 2 (NS-2), to demonstrate the behavior and benefits of the proposed metric with Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) routing protocol. The results presented improvements in the distribution of multimedia content compared to the original Expected Transmission Count (ETX) metric, by analyzing well-know QoS and QoE metrics.