King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals

Computer Engineering Department

Video Transport (Video / IP) over

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks
MS Thesis proposal

Hafiz Muhammad Asif

Student ID#. 230457
upmhafiz@ccse.kfupm.edu.sa
 Table of Contents
1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 3

2 Wireless ad hoc network ................................................................................ 4

2.1 Types of ad hoc networks ......................................................................... 5

2.1.1 MANETs............................................................................................ 6

2.1.2 Mobile ad hoc sensors networks........................................................ 6

2.2 Restriction on a MANET .......................................................................... 8

2.3 Challenges to a MANET........................................................................... 8

2.4 Overview of ad hoc Routing Protocols ..................................................... 9

2.4.1 Table driven Approach .......................................................................... 10

2.4.2 On-demand Approach............................................................................ 10

2.4.2.1VBS-O/WEAC................................................................................. 11

2.4.3 Hybrid Approach ................................................................................... 11

3 Video Codecs ................................................................................................. 11

3.1 H263 Video Compression Standard........................................................ 12

3.2 H264 MPEG Video Compression Standard........................................... 13

4 Video Transport over Ad hoc Network ...................................................... 14

5 Problem Statement ....................................................................................... 16

5.1 Methodology and Approach.................................................................... 16

5.2 Preliminary Simulation Results............................................................... 17

Abstract:
Video transport over ad hoc networks is more challenging than over other wireless
networks. The wireless links in an ad hoc network are not very much error resilient and
can go down frequently because of node mobility, interference, channel fading, and the
lack of infrastructure. Moreover, typical video applications may need a higher bandwidth
and higher reliability connection than that provided by a single link in current or
emerging wireless networks. On the other hand, it is possible to establish multiple paths
between a source and a destination, which provides an extra degree of freedom in
designing video coding and transport schemes. In this thesis proposal, we review several
video encoding and transport control techniques, all assuming that a routing protocol is
able to set up and constantly update two paths each made of multiple links. We intend to
propose an existing routing protocol (most probably WEAC protocol) with modification
to make it fit for video traffic over ad hoc network. Primarily, we try to establish a
connection for single hop with acceptable performance which will then be extended for
multihop later. The thesis also covers video traffic standard study and relevant
specifications for a particular standard.

1. Introduction
The mobile trend keeps on growing and growing with lapse of time. Now we may need
mobile features even where it is extremely difficult to implement traditional wireless
structure and at least infeasible as far as time constraints are concerned. For instance,
some researchers meet at random place with their laptops and are interested in
communicating with each other. It seems tedious for them to first arrange a network setup
and then communicate as their communication is for very short time and these meetings
are usually once in a blue moon. Therefore, there is a need for an infrastructureless
network that is suitable for situations like described above. It is ad hoc network that came
up with such notion!
Wireless networks or IEEE 802.11 have two mode of operation: (1) infrastructured
wireless networks and (2) infrastructureless wireless networks (ad hoc networks). This
report is supposed to discuss ad hoc networks with the assumption that we all know
infrastructured wireless networks (e.g. today’s internet, conventional cellular mobile
communication). The concern of this thesis is with infrastructureless wireless
communication. It is the mode in which there is no need of any infrastructure for the
devices to communicate with each other. The devices somehow recognize each other and
communicate and in fact, it is the world of ad hoc networks.
In the remainder of this document, I will discuss ad hoc networks in general, routing
protocols for ad hoc networks, video codecs and related work. Finally, problem statement
will be given to end the discussion.

2. Wireless Ad hoc network:

“A wireless ad hoc network is a collection of two or more devices / nodes or terminals
with wireless communications and networking capability that communicate with each
other without the aid of any centralized administrator. Each node in a wireless ad hoc
network functions as both a host and a router. The network topology is in general
dynamic, because the connectivity among the nodes may vary with time due to node
mobility, node departures and new node arrivals. Hence, there is a need for efficient
routing protocols to allow the nodes to communicate [2].”
Devices themselves are responsible to arrange communication with each other. It implies
that routing, network management, maintenance etc. have to be done by each node (in
general). This is called peer-level multi-hopping and is the basic building block for ad
hoc networks. It implies that ad hoc devices are more complex than other wireless
networks. Therefore, ad hoc networks form sort of clusters to effectively perform such
complex operation. The following figure shows some nodes forming ad hoc networks.

Ad hoc network: nodes moving in different directions and speeds

Now keeping ad hoc network operation in mind, we can say that there are additional
challenges we have to tackle along with the challenges we already have in traditional
wireless networks. For example, routing, delay guarantee, bandwidth guarantee etc. are
much more challenging in case of ad hoc networks. Moreover, if we take the case of
video transport then QoS may act like a bottleneck!
In summary mobile ad hoc networks have the following characteristics:
• No prior infrastructure before the communication starts.
• Generally, there is no specific limit on the number of devices to be in ad hoc
networks. It is limited by QoS and bandwidth etc. parameters.
• Joining and leaving of a device is random and obeys no specific rule.
• No predefined route like ATM. In fact, the devices themselves have to do this job.
• There is no AP like WLANs. However, in some routing algorithms, one of the
devices (in a cluster) may behave similar to AP (we’ll discuss later).
• Like conventional cellular network, there is no need for handover and location
management.
Now a few words about why ad hoc network? Despite all new challenges (delay,
bandwidth, mobility handling etc) faced by ad hoc networks, it is comparatively easy to
deploy networking features in ad hoc networks. Moreover, it is relatively inexpensive,
less overhead required, and most importantly a network of the future. MANET (type of
ad hoc network) is good as it gives network formation on demand without any prior
infrastructure. Some of the popular applications of MANETs include the following (taken
from [6]):
• Personal communication like cell phones, laptops, PDA
• Group communication such as communication set-up in exhibitions, conferences,
presentations, meetings, lectures
• Military / emergency / discovery / civil communication

2.1 Types of Ad hoc networks:

An ad-hoc network can be classified into two main types:
• mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) and
• mobile ad-hoc sensors network
2.1.1 MANETs:
A MANET is an autonomous collection of mobile users that communicate over relatively
bandwidth constrained wireless links. Since the nodes are mobile, the network topology
may change rapidly and unpredictably over time. The network is decentralized, where all
network activity including discovering the topology and delivering messages must be
executed by the nodes themselves, i.e., routing functionality will be incorporated into
mobile nodes.
The set of applications for MANETs (also mentioned earlier) is diverse, ranging from
small, static networks that are constrained by power sources, to large-scale, mobile,
highly dynamic networks. Moreover, the design of network protocols for these networks
is a complex issue. Regardless of the application, MANETs need efficient distributed
algorithms to determine network organization, link scheduling, and routing. However, in
distributed environment, it is not a child’s play to determine viable routing paths and
delivering messages because network topology can change any time. So traditional
routing will not work here. We need some sophisticated routing algorithms that take this
important issue (mobile network topology) into account. While the shortest path (based
on a given cost function) from a source to a destination in a static network is usually the
optimal route, this idea is not easily extended to MANETs. Factors such as variable
wireless link quality, propagation path loss, fading, interference, power consumed, and
network topological changes, become core issues in routing. Moreover, the situation is
aggravated in a military environment in the sense that along with these issues in routing,
we also need to guarantee assets security, latency, reliability, protection against
intentional jamming, and recovery from failure. Unfulfilment of any of these
requirements may degrade the performance and dependability of the network.

2.1.2 Mobile Ad hoc Sensor Network:

“Unlike typical sensor networks, which communicate directly with the centralized
controller, a mobile ad-hoc sensor network follows a broader sequence of operational,
thus demanding a less complex setup procedure. A mobile ad-hoc sensor or hybrid ad-
hoc network consists of a number of sensor spreads in a geographical area. Each sensor is
capable of mobile communication and has some level of intelligence to process signals
and to transmit data. In order to support routed communications between two mobile
nodes, the routing protocol determines the node connectivity and routes packets
accordingly. This makes a mobile ad-hoc sensor network highly adaptable so that it can
be deployed in almost all environments [3]”.
Wireless ad-hoc sensor networks are getting popular to researchers on account of their
new features that were either not know or at least not deployed in the past. Therefore, it is
emerging a hot research topic in network field. They have great long-term economic
potential, ability to transform our lives (as there is a hope behind its research!), and pose
many new system-building challenges. Some of the benefits of the newer, more capable
sensor nodes are the ability to (taken from [14]):
• Build large-scale networks
• Implement sophisticated protocols
• Reduce the amount of communication (wireless) required to perform tasks by
distributed and/or local precomputations
• Implement complex power saving modes of operation depending on the
environment and the state of the network.
Due to the above-mentioned advances in sensor network technology, more and more
practical applications of wireless sensor networks continue to emerge. Two examples are
very common to favor wireless sensor networks, first of which is the replacement of
existing detecting scheme for forest fires around the world. Using sensor networks, the
detecting time can be significantly reduced. The second use is in the large buildings
which currently, use many environmental sensors and complex control system to
implement the wired sensor networks. Introducing wireless sensor networks instead of
wired one yields less complexity, unlimited reconfigurability and easy control system
[14].
In mobile ad-hoc sensor networks, each host may be equipped with a variety of sensors
that can be organized to detect different local events. Moreover, an ad-hoc sensor
network offers low setup and administration costs. We can expect to see their deployment
on a wide scale in the near future.
2.2 Restrictions on a MANET:
Some of the main restrictions of a MANET include:
• Dynamic topology –As mentioned earlier in introductory part, ad hoc networks
have very flexible mobility meaning that nodes join and leave the network in a
random and dynamic fashion. This results in dynamic links establishment and
removal. Hence, links are also subject to frequent disconnection during node's
mobility.
• Bandwidth constrained – This is not a particular ad hoc network restriction. In
fact, wireless links have significantly lower capacity than the wired links; they
are affected by several error sources (interference, fading, environmental
condition etc) that result in degradation of the received signal and high bit error
rate in the range of 10-4 and 10-5.
• Energy constrained – The prime focus of mobile world is not just to improve it
performance. There are also some points that need to be addressed. If the mobile
devices have batteries with more power, this, in turn, is hazardous to man’s
health. So there must be a tradeoff in performance and battery power. Hence, the
most important system design criteria for optimization may be energy
conservation.
• Limited physical security - Mobility implies higher security risks than static
operation because portable devices may be stolen or their traffic may cross
insecurely wireless links. Eavesdropping, spoofing and denial-of-service attacks
are relatively easy to deploy in wireless environment and should be taken care of
• Autonomous – As there is no AP in ad hoc networks, so complex management
system is required to make the system operate effectively.
• Infrastructure-less and self operated.

2.3 Challenges to a MANET:

Some of the challenges for mobile ad hoc networks include:

1. Mobility
2. Scalability
 3. Bandwidth constraint
4. QoS support
5. RF connectivity (e.g. wireless networks may not be available due to
interference and propagation problems)
6. Frequent disconnection
7. Energy constraints
8. Routing ( Unicast / Multicast)
9. Secure routing
10. Cluster cooperation (e.g. WEAC)
11. Clock synchronization (due to lack of central control and unpredictable
mobility, it is difficult to synchronize…)
12. Neighbor discovery (routing problem)
13. Distributed information processing and filtering (efficient use can decrease
unnecessary traffic on the network and increase network throughput)
14. Power aware routing

2.4 Overview of Ad hoc Routing Protocols:

Ad hoc mobile routing protocols can be categorized into three, namely, table driven
proactive, on-demand-driven reactive/ source initiated and the hybrid protocols. The
following table shows some of the popular protocols of each category.
Table driven(proactive) On-demand driven (preactive) Hybrid
Destination sequenced distance Signal Stability Routing (SSR) Zone Routing
vector (DSDV) Protocol

Wireless routing protocol (WRP) Dynamic Source Routing (DSR)

Cluster switched gateway routing Temporary Ordered Routing
(CSGR) Algorithm (TORA)

Source tree adaptive routing Ad Hoc on Demand Distance

(STAR) Vector Routing (AODV)

Fisheye state routing (FSR) Relative Distance Microdiversity

Routing (RDMAR)

Associativity Based Routing

Protocol (ABR)

VBS-O/WEAC

2.4.1 Table driven Approach:

In proactive protocols, nodes continuously search for routing information within a
network, so that when a route is needed, the route is already known. Some of the
examples of this protocol are shown in the above table.

2.4.2 On-demand driven Approach:

On demand driven or the source initiated protocol is the second category under ad hoc
mobile routing protocols. For these types of protocols, it creates routes only when desired
by source nodes. When a node requires a route to destination, it initiates route discovery
process within the network. This process completes once one route is found or all
possible route permutations are examined. Once a route is discovered and established, it
is maintained by route maintenance procedure until either destination becomes
inaccessible along every path from source or route is no longer desired. Examples are
described in the table (above).
We intend to use VBS-O / WEAC in our work so it seems suitable to discuss it briefly
before going ahead.
2.4.2.1 VBS-O/WEAC:
The proposed protocols are: The Warning Energy Aware Clusterhead (WEAC) and The
Virtual Base Station On-demand (VBS-O). WEAC establishes a dynamic wireless mobile
infrastructure. A mobile node is elected from a set of nominees to act as a temporary base
station for a period of time within its zone. The authors study the characteristics and
performance of both WEAC and VBS-O protocols by means of simulation. Also, in each
cluster, we use clusterhead controlled token to assign the channel among contending
Mobile Terminals (MTs). A clusterhead controlled token supports multiple class of
services and minimizes collisions. Moreover, we derive formulas to calculate the average
waiting time for a packet, in order to be transmitted. In our study, we use two polling
schemes, namely: Exhaustive polling and Partially Gated polling controlled token. It is
shown that both WEAC and VBS-O protocols scales well to large networks of mobile
stations, and they outperform other routing protocols in terms of stability, load balancing
and energy saving in a network.

2.4.3 Hybrid Approach:

As the name suggests, hybrid has features of both table driven and on-demand routing
schemes. ZRP is a typical example of such type.

3 Video Codecs:
Video data is normally too much redundant. It will waste an ample amount of bandwidth
if we send the data without any compression. Applying some compression technique
reduces the bandwidth required by a factor of 70 or more, in general. Therefore, it is in
practice for video data to compress it before transmission.
Today, a lot of video compression standards are available to us with different pros and
cons and suitable for different data rate, video quality and QoS etc. Among the standards,
two major groups are very active in this area. They are called ITU (International
Telecommunication Unit) and MPEG (Moving Pictures experts Group). H261, H262, and
H263 are popular ITU video standards while MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG3, MPEG4,
MPEG are some popular ones from MPEG.
Recently in May 2003, a new popular and efficient standard (H264 /MPEG4 AVC) was
launched by joint venture of both these two groups. It has many interesting and easy-to-
use features on account of which is has got the attention of many of the researchers of
this field. It is most probable that we use this standard in our simulation. Hence, it is
important to highlight this standard in a little detail.

3.1 H263 Video Compression

H.263, a video compression standardized by ITU, appeared in February 1995. Basically,
it is designed for low bit-rate communications. It is almost similar to its predecessor
standard, H261, but with some enhanced feature. For instance, there are improvements
performance and error recovery by using half pixel precision (instead of full) and making
hierarchical structure optional. The latter is useful especially in better error recovery.
Futheremore, five resolutions (CIF, QCIF, SQCIF, 4CIF, and 16CIF) are supported by
the new standard H263. But if there is significant motion, the H263 gives poor
performance. Hence, it is better for applications, such videoconferencing, where there is a
little to do with motion. Summarizing its application, we can list the followings [34]:
• video over the Internet and over telephone lines
• surveillance and monitoring
• telemedicine (medical consultation and diagnosis at a distance)
• computer-based training and education
Regarding video coding, DCT exploits spatial redundancy while motion compensation
makes used of temporal redundancy. Moreover, the features such as half-pixel accuracy,
bidirectional coded macroblocks (16x16 and 8x8 for luminance and chrominance
respectively) really make H263 best fit for low bit rate applications.
As H263 has little to do with motion problem, it gives very good performance as far
delay is concerned. If everything goes well, the compression should not exceed 2 frames
(frame size) of the delay. But most systems have several layers of buffering and queuing
so this delay can even be as large as 10 seconds in some cases! For more detail on H263,
readers are referred to [35].

3.2 H264 /MPEG4 AVC

“H264 is a high compression digital video codec standard written by the itu-T Video
Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC MPEG as the product of a
collective partnership effort known as the Joint video team (JVT)” [12].
Although multi-picture motion compensation (upto 32 reference pictures can be used,
thus allowing improvements in data rate and video quality), variable block size (from
16x16 down to 4x4), quarter pixel precision (MC precision of 1/8th pixel is possible),
deblocking filter (for finer tuning in picture shape), 4x4 linear DCT (before it was real,
so computationally easy), NAL (network abstarction layer that provides more robustness
and flexibility and is designed to provide network-friendly video representation), Data
partitioning (a feature providing the ability to separate more important and less important
syntax elements into different packets of data) etc. are some of the commonly known
features, the main goals of this standard are to provide compression performance and
video representation addressing video telephony and nonconversational (storage,
broadcast, or streaming) applications suitable for network environment [32].
If we broadly list the applications where H264 can be deployed, we may end up with the
followings:
¾ Broadcast over cable, satellite, cable modem, DSL, terrestrial, etc.
¾ Interactive or serial storage on optical and magnetic devices, DVD, etc.
¾ H264 DVB over IP Broadcast Encoder (details are available in [33])
¾ Conversational services over ISDN, Ethernet, LAN, DSL, wireless and mobile
networks, modems, etc. or mixtures of these.
¾ Video-on-demand or multimedia streaming services over ISDN, cable modem,
DSL, LAN, wireless networks, etc.
¾ Multimedia messaging services (MMS) over ISDN, DSL, Ethernet, LAN,
wireless and mobile networks, etc.
The detail description and analysis of H264 can be found in [32].
4 Video Transport over Ad Hoc Network:
Real time traffic over ad hoc is important in two aspects. First, the gradual popularity of
ad hoc networks especially for certain circumstances such as research conference.
Second, the need to make all kinds of network suitable for real time traffic. Thus, on
discussing the related work, we find research in both areas. Some concentrate on ad hoc
routing protocols to optimize the overall performance while others are more interested in
user’s data rate and codecs used for compression / decompression.
[16] introduces multistream coding with multipath transport (MPT) for video traffic over
ad hoc. First, a video bit stream is divided into several substreams by video encoder and
then packets from different substreams are sent to several different paths. At receiver,
everything is reversed. Moreover, to make multistreaming appropriate for ad hoc, they
propose three different multistreaming techniques each with different advantages. They
show, by Morkovian model and OPNET modeler, that there is a considerable
improvement is video quality if we make use of this concept. However, they did not use
PCF mode in their OPNET simulation which I think, should have tested. In fact, this
group (the authors of [16]) is very active in this topic research and they step by step
introduced the ideas of multistreaming or mutli-flow of a given video data ([18]), MPT
([26]). Also, the three coding schemes they made use of in [16] have been described in
detail in [19], [20] & [21].
An interesting analysis is carried out using H264 video standard to study video transport
over ad hoc networks in [25]. Their simulation shows that packet size of as small as 300
bytes should be used under unfavorable condition as any increase results in degradation
of PSNR. For higher error probabilities, even smaller than 300 bytes is good for
significant PSNR. Regarding retransmission attempts, 3 per MPDU gives highest
achievable PSNR. Increasing beyond 3 gives no fruit as far as PSNR is concerned. This is
useful analysis and good approximation to calculate packet size, error probabilities etc.
for a given PSNR. However, neither did they show any analytical support to their
simulation results nor they exploited the idea of MPT. I believe that if we extend this
simulation using our protocol with the introduction of MPT concept, we’ll be able to get
better performance (i.e. higher PSNR with larger packet size and smaller
retransmissions). Moreover, their experiments sound only for static devices and do not
give any guarantee when the devices are mobile.
Among the three schemes described in [16], multiple description motion compensation
(MDMC) is unique in the sense that it gives better error resilience on lossy packet
networks. The main idea is to combine all the correlated bits to give acceptable quality
reconstructed received signal. [27] gives analytical model to prove this feature of
MDMC. Furthermore, the proposed analytical model has also been tested by simulation
in the same paper.
While the above discussion is related with video standards or ad hoc networks algorithm
to improve the performance, [28] discusses, in general for wireless networks, how to
obtain optimal data rate for video traffic. We know by now that video is delay sensitive.
In real network traffic, there is a loss of packets due to antenna poor efficiency,
interference, fading, and weather conditions etc. resulting in need for retransmission
(ARQ) or some mechanism to recover the original signal (e.g. FEC). [28] gives a very
nice way of dynamically develop strategies for FEC (e.g. no of redundant packets) and
ARQ (e.g. dynamic change in transmission rate) in order to meet certain QoS
requirements. Moreover, buffers (of client and server) play an important role in delay
jitter (in ARQ). Hence, they also develop a control mechanism for buffers with the notion
to minimum delay jitter.
In the light of previous discussion, it is clear now that use of MPT gives us flexibility
over data rate. We can achieve higher data rate if paths are independent. [2] adds to it and
presents a video distortion model (analytical). It claims that distortion is caused due to
mainly two factors. i.e. encoder distortion and packet loss due to congestion. They also
present a tradeoff using simulation between data rate and congestion. Moreover, what is
appealing is the comparison results of encoded transmission and decoded transmission
which give a quantitative measure of how much distortion is added due to congestion.
So far what has been discussed on the whole until now takes us towards MPT concept.
[30] introduces a new concept of cross-layer design framework for real time traffic using
H264 codec in their model. The main idea behind this is that the scheme tries to make
maximum use of networks resources such as bandwidth etc. where the traffic is in
progress (being transmitted). To avoid congestion, traffic flows and link capacities (on
the chosen links) are allocated together. Their simulation shows improvement over
traditional schemes in terms of date rate and PSNR. The improvement is multiplied
further if we combine MPT wit cross-layer design.

5 Problem Statement:
The objective of this work is to establish an ad hoc network system suitable for video
traffic transport using VBS-O / WEAC protocol. Firstly, we try to find out average
number of hops, a video client can expect with some broad assumption (discussed later).
Then, we establish a setup for single hop communication among the devices and optimize
the performance assuming the devices are static. Secondly, we extend single hop
communication to multihop and try to maintain a reasonable performance of the network
(for static devices). We use VBS-O / WEAC [15] routing protocol to do this work. We
analyze this protocol and make modifications (e.g. we may deploy MPT and
multistreaming concepts as learnt during survey) to make it work for video transport over
ad hoc in an efficient way. We try to optimize the performance either by code
optimization or by modifying the protocol to make it suitable for video traffic or by
adopting any above mentioned video transport scheme.

5.1 Methodology and Approach

Video transport over ad hoc networks is currently, a new and hot research area. A lot is
left to be done. We first try to reach a final modified WEAC protocol that gives a
considerable performance for video traffic.
In analyzing our model performance, we consider the following parameters (and may be
some others, as well) and see their behavior as the number of mobile devices increases.
ƒ Average VBS Duration - The average time duration (in seconds) for which a
mobile node remains a VBS to measure of system stability.
ƒ Number of VBS elections – once again, to measure stability, we see that how
often a VBS is elected.
ƒ Video packet size: This parameter indicates whether we need variable packet size
(and if needed, what is rule of thumb to vary) or not to achieve better
performance. We can also plot throughput vs. packet size
 ƒ Total number of hops to give a reasonable performance
ƒ Total Number of Mobile Nodes Elected as VBS: This parameter makes us aware
of the fairness of the load distribution.
ƒ First node ran out energy: It verifies how accurate “Total Number of Mobile
Nodes Elected as VBS” is.
ƒ The average packet delivery time: This parameter is a key to judge the protocol
performance for video traffic. It should be as small as possible. Also it is useful to
plot for different values of error probability to make tradeoff.
ƒ The average number of successful transmitted packets: To calculate overall
throughput of the system.
In order to enhance security features, we may use security packages available in our
simulator.

5.2 Preliminary Simulation Results

As a matter of getting some idea about number of hops for a typical video traffic, we set
up a model with the following assumptions:
• Path is pre-established using some prior routing protocol (any protocol). In other
words, we did not take into account the delay caused by routing protocol.
• There is no collision and contention for a packet. When a packet comes from any
source, it resides on a common queue attached to every node and gets transmitted
on its turn.
• The wireless link speed is 2Mbps and the nodes are 100m apart from each other.
• For this part of simulation, we used fixed packet size of 2KB but later we’ll
change it to see its effect on network performance.
• A packet is dropped on reaching a threshold delay value.
• In order to characterize video traffic, we used H263 typical values of frame size
(176x144), compression / decompression delay (63msec) and 56 kbps bit rate.
With these assumptions, we ran the program for different values of number of hops. The
value of end to end delay for real time traffic should not exceed 250 msec for an
acceptable result. We can see from the figure that the maximum number of hops is
around 15 with all the above mentioned assumptions and specifications (<250msec). We

0.35

0.3

0.25

0.2
Delay

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0 10 20 30 40
Hops

Figure: End to End Delay for Video Traffic (H263 Standard)

expect this number to decrease when we take into account the effect of CSMA / CA
protocol and the delay caused by routing protocol. Moreover, the buffer size needs also to
be considered.
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1. http://www.ece.clemson.edu/commnet/import.htm
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