Multi-Path Selection and Scheduling Scheme for Multi-Description Video Streaming in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks

Most existing works on video transmission over wireless multi-hop networks only consider routing as a network layer problem and have been decoupled from application. Traditionally, the multi-path routing protocol selects paths with lower hop counts and discards routes with higher hop counts, which are application-agnostic. However, the paths with minimum hop counts are not always the least delay ones. In this paper, we propose an application-centric multi-path selection and scheduling scheme for multi-description (MD) video transmission in wireless multi-hop networks, where the expected efficient transmission of video is adopted as the routing metric. The proposed routing scheme selects paths to transmit data with different priorities under the consideration of actual delay of the paths. In addition, the path switching scheme will be used to respond to the changes in the network environment. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed application-centric approach can improve end-to-end delay and packet delivery ratio of I-frame video delivery and decrease distortion (in terms of PSNR) compared to conventional application-agnostic scheme.