Efficient Relaying of Video Packets over Wireless Ad hoc Devices

Wireless channels in ad hoc networks are essentially erroneous, unstable, and restricted in capacity, which does challenge video communication. In this paper, the authors introduce a novel design for ad hoc devices that relay real-time video packets. Transiently "caching" packets allows an intermediate node to respond to ARQ requests, which obviously enhances the reliability of retransmission and reduces cumulative power consumption. Additionally, each node smartly selects packets to forward once the channel cannot accommodate all of them. The authors also propose a jointly discarding mechanism in which stale packets and their dependent ones can be detected and destroyed to save energy and bandwidth. The framework has been realized over a real-life testbed, clearly showing its soundness.