Packet loss estimation using Poisson random process for improving multimedia transmission in MANETs

Recent advances in information and communication technology resulted in increased use of multimedia applications. Multimedia transmission over Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) with high Quality of Service (QoS) is a challenging task due to mobility of the nodes. The problems associated with multimedia transmission are loss of packets or frames and delay in receiving the packets at destination. To maintain the QoS, all the multimedia applications need that packets should be delivered in sequence and order, and delay should be within the tolerable limits. Existing works mainly uses packet loss information at source station to determine whether the transmission window size should be increased or decreased In existing approaches, the source station takes decision about increasing or decreasing window size based on reception of Acknowledgement/ non-reception of Acknowledgement. The magnitude of increment/decrement in window size is predefined but not as per actual scenario in the network. This leads to poor utilization of resources. Since multimedia applications are loss-tolerant, it is important to compute the packet loss accurately as the QoS requirements for multimedia services accepts the loss of packets up to some threshold. In this paper, we model the active stations as a Poisson random process and computed the packet loss, idle period and busy period at the front end of route. This packet loss estimation is useful for precise specification of buffer size resulting in improved QoS. Our experimental results demonstrate the usefulness in designing optimal control in order to improve QoS for multimedia applications in MANETs.