Multiple tree video multicast over wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we propose multiple tree construction schemes and routing protocols for video streaming over wireless ad hoc networks. The basic idea is to split the video into multiple parts and send each part over a different tree, which are constructed to be disjoint with each other so as to increase robustness to loss and other transmission degradations. Specifically, we propose two novel multiple tree multicast protocols. Our first scheme constructs two disjoint multicast trees in a serial, but distributed fashion, and is referred to as serial multiple disjoint tree multicast routing protocol. It achieves reasonable tree connectivity while maintaining disjointness of two trees. In order to reduce routing overhead and construction delay, we further propose parallel multiple nearly-disjoint multicast trees protocol, which is also shown to achieve reasonable tree connectivity. Simulations show that resulting video quality for either scheme is significantly higher than that of single tree multicast, with similar routing overhead and forwarding efficiency.