Content Aware Multi-MetricRouting for MPEG-4 Video over IEEE 802.11e Wireless Mesh Networks Using Cross-Layer Approach

Video streams over wireless channel require stringent QoS constraints, such as low packet loss and latency. It becomes the main challenge to design a network to achieve these QoS objectives. This paper proposes a cross-layer approach to enhance quality of MPEG-4 video stream transmission over an IEEE 802.11e wireless mesh networks. Most of the conventional routing schemes follow the philosophy of "shortest path", where hop count is the metric to determine the best route but shortest-path routing schemes repeatedly use congested nodes and links, causing heavy loads, frequent link failures and interface queue overflow. In this paper Cross-layer approach among application layer, network layer and MAC layer has been proposed to discover the best QoS route to forward the highest priority video frames. The proposed modified protocol adds the QoS parameter ETX metric to hop count as a new routing metric to select the best QoS route during the route discovery phase. Proposed approach is compared with already developed schemes. Simulation results using NS2 Simulator toolgive high performance under light and heavy loads network traffic.