Load-aware Flooding for Streaming over Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

This paper discusses the streaming of high rate media such as video or audio information over ad hoc networks in disaster situations or for temporary events when it is difficult to use fixed infrastructure. The conventional simple flooding is not applicable for this application because it generates a large number of redundant rebroadcast and heavy traffic load to the network. To restrain redundant rebroadcast messages, several methods have been proposed. But since those studies do not take into account the actual load condition at each node that will affect network efficiency, they cannot achieve both ensuring the high message reachability and reducing redundant rebroadcast. In this paper, we propose two novel load-aware flooding methods using the MAC transmission queue information at each node to make the decision about whether rebroadcast messages should be sent or not. Through network simulations, we evaluate and show the effectiveness of our proposals. The result shows that our proposals achieve both ensuring high message reachability and restraint of redundant rebroadcast comparing with existing methods.