A CROSS-LAYER APPROACH FOR TRANSMISSION OF MPEG-4 VIDEO OVER WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS

Video streaming over wireless LANs in real time is very challenging due to the time-varying wireless channel characteristics. While transmitting MPEG-4 video over Wireless Mesh Networks many parameters such as delay, latency needs to be considered. For such time critical application a new Cross layer approach is proposed. A Crosslayer approach provides freedom to exchange information among different layers to enhance the video quality. Parameters can be exchanged between Application, Network and Data link layer to improve quality of service. At the application layer the information about the video frames can be shared with the network layer so that appropriate routing metrics can be chosen. Commonly routing protocol uses hop count as routing metrics to find out the best route. The modified protocol uses Expected Transmission Count (ETX) metric along with hop count to select best QoS route. The approach improves the performance metrics such as throughput, packet delivery ratio, end to end delay and reduces total video frame loss