Hop-by-Hop Frame Aggregation for VoIP on Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

The already severe inefficiency problem in running VoIP on the IEEE 802.11-based wireless LAN is exacerbated in multi-hop networks due to spatial interference. This paper presents a novel scheme that significantly mitigates the effect of the interference by combining the inter-call aggregation and the pseudo-broadcast technique as used in network coding. As such, the proposed scheme works effectively not just for calls traveling the same routed path but also for calls crossing each other inside the multi-hop networks. We demonstrate through extensive simulation that the IEEE 802.11-based multi-hop network can be boosted up to 700% in terms of the number of supportable VoIP calls, with acceptable QoS, through the proposed scheme.