Ensuring service availability for media handling in mobile ad-hoc networks

The autonomous nature and mobility of ad-hoc network nodes do not guarantee availability and timely delivery of packets, thus affecting the QoS in the network. As of today there is no analytic model to explore ways of achieving cooperation among hosts in the network and enable information sharing without any disruption of service. This is the prime motivation for our work in investigating a probabilistic model to stimulate cooperation among network nodes and enhance the quality of service in the network. Factors such as reliability and security certainly depend on trusted communication, and may be built on top of the model proposed in this paper. Mobile multimedia computing research focuses on the architecture and protocols for advanced mobile applications and their supporting infrastructure. Such applications typically involve peer-to-peer and group communication of distributed multimedia and time-critical information.