Video-aware multicast opportunistic routing over 802.11 two-hop mesh networks

In this paper, we propose and characterize the performance of a novel video-aware Opportunistic Routing (OR) algorithm for multicast, using a one-hop and two-hop forwarding scheme in 802.11 mesh networks. We believe that the OR approach exploits the inherent broadcast nature of the wireless medium and adapts very well in the lossy wireless environment. Inferring from the above, we extend a state of the art routing algorithm, namely MORE, that leverages on this approach and offers multicast support, but is not efficiently applicable in video streaming. By employing our scheme, we enable support for video streaming application with hard time-constraints. In addition, we focus on the orchestration of the packet transmissions and the prioritization of the video traffic towards improving the video-perception quality of the end users. In order to evaluate the proposed scheme, we conducted experiments in a realistic medium-scale wireless testbed. Our results show that the proposed scheme increases the average video-perception quality, measured in PSNR, by up to 270% in some cases or up to 175% in average, compared to the MORE algorithm.