Hybrid Search Algorithms for P2P Media Streaming Distribution in Ad Hoc Networks

Media streaming delivery in wireless ad hoc networks is challenging due to the stringent resource restrictions, potential high loss rate and the decentralized architecture. To support long and high-quality streams, one viable approach is that a media stream is partitioned into segments, and then the segments are replicated in a network and served in a peer-to-peer fashion, however, the searching strategy for segments is one key problem with the approach. This paper proposes a hybrid ant-inspired search algorithm (HASA) for P2P media streaming distribution in Ad Hoc networks. It takes the advantages of random walkers and ant-inspired algorithms for search in unstructured P2P networks, such as low transmitting latency and less redundant query messages. We quantify the performance of our scheme in terms of response time and network query messages for media streaming distribution. Simulation results show that it can effectively improve the Search Efficiency for P2P media streaming distribution in Ad Hoc networks.