Route selection using retransmission packets for video streaming on ad hoc networks

An ad hoc network system can be deployed rapidly and easily. However, transmitting a real-time video stream over an ad hoc network create a video interruption issue because wireless links in an ad hoc network are broken frequently due to noise signals, attenuation, shadowing effect and nodes mobility. This paper studies a video transport scheme that creates multi-path route, which consists of a main route for video streaming and sub routes for retransmission packets generated by data link layer ARQ to complement the packet loss of main route, and selects the suitable main route from these routes according to the network condition. Furthermore, we report an experiment using a camera as a mobile video source and notebook computers as ad hoc nodes. The results show that this scheme can select a route that has sufficient throughput for video streaming, and when the camera moves, the route can be changed seamlessly without video interruption.