Dynamic Temporal Scalability: Video adaptation in sparse Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Video streaming is not possible between nodes in different partitions of a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET). However, ferry nodes can be used to deliver video in this environment. This service is helpful in some application scenarios, like emergencies. An important problem arises when the capacity offered by such a delay-tolerant network is not enough to deliver all the video produced. Then, video adaptation is necessary, but the network capacity is hard to estimate. Dynamic Temporal Scalability (DTS) is a novel technique to solve this problem. DTS schedules frames from a stream stored in a node adapting the frame rate to the available resources. The results of evaluating this technique show that the frame sequence delivered to the user is close to live video and has small quality variations. In addition, video quality scales with the available resources. Finally, the efficiency in the use of network resources is similar with DTS and the default scheduling technique, i.e., FIFO.