MAC layer support for delay tolerant video transport in disruptive MANETs

Abstract

The overall goal of this work is to improve video delivery in emergency and rescue scenarios using sparse MANETs that might be prone to frequent link breaks and network partitions. The core idea of our approach is to reduce the number of MAC layer retransmissions that are likely to fail. We do not drop packets that could not be sent after the final retransmission. Instead we handle them in an overlay for store-carry-forwarding. The design of the overlay protocol takes the instability of the network into account, in such a way that each overlay entity works autonomously and keeps a minimum amount of state. Our experimental results show that we reduce packet loss seen on broken links, while at the same time significantly reducing overhead in terms of the total amount of packets transmitted at the physical layer. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.