Improving Video Transmission over Heterogeneous Networks

Mobile Ad-doc Networks (MANETs) have been conceived to operate as stand-alone networks, which means that data traffic will be restricted within the MANETs. However, in most practical applications of MANETs, mobile devices require access to wired hosts (e.g. video servers) located beyond the limits of the mobile ad hoc network. Therefore, routing protocols originally designed for an ad hoc environment must be extended to support the interoperability with other networks. This work presents a new algorithm that is integrated into the AQA-AODV routing protocol in order to improve the interoperability between MANETs and wired networks (heterogeneous networks). The proposed algorithm has been designed to improve the network conditions for video transmission over heterogeneous networks. Therefore, a performance evaluation of the video streaming over a simulated network was carried out using the proposed approach. The simulations experiments performed in this study involve the transmission of H.264/AVC streams with different spatial and temporal characteristics. The results reveal that the rate-adaptive strategy helps avoid or reduce the congestion obtaining an improvement of the received video quality.