Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

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Pervasive and Mobile Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pmc

Fast track article

A real-time routing protocol with adaptive traffic shaping for

multimedia streaming over next-generation of Wireless
Multimedia Sensor Networks
Adel A. Ahmed 1
Faculty of Computing and IT, King Abdulaziz University, Rabigh, Saudi Arabia

article info abstract

Article history: Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) consist of mixed distributed sensor nodes
Received 22 May 2016 and multimedia sensor nodes that are combined with a miniature video camera to retrieve,
Received in revised form 30 November store, and process real-time multimedia data. Furthermore, real-time multimedia packet
2016
dissemination means the packets are transmitted according to the constraint of end-to-end
Accepted 27 January 2017
Available online 4 February 2017
deadlines. In WMSNs, compression complexity, and real-time data routing are the main
issues that performed on a resource-constrained wireless sensor nodes. The traffic shape
Keywords:
of multimedia streaming is highly bursty and usually requires high available bandwidth,
Adaptive traffic shaper low delay, and low Bit Error Rate. Furthermore, the variable bitrate real-time routing of
Multimedia complexity coding multimedia data over WMSNs suffers from communication problems such as network
Multimedia stream congestion, link failures, heavy real-time traffic rate and limited bandwidth. This paper
Peak signal-to-noise ratio proposes a real-time video streaming routing protocol with an adaptive traffic shaping
data rate over next-generation of WMSN. It evolves a novel algorithm for accomplishing
adaptive traffic shaping of multimedia streaming and it utilizes the multipath forwarding
with dynamic cost calculation for selecting next hop. The finding in the experimental
results shows that the proposed mechanism guarantees high QoS performance in terms
of delivery ratio, less end-to-end delay, optimal complexity, smooth routing reliability and
fidelity criteria of the multimedia streaming compared to the baseline routing protocols.
2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) are the sophisticated technology of ad-hoc networks in which the
multimedia sensor boards are integrated with a miniature camera to retrieve multimedia streams [1,2]. The next-generation
of sensor node provides higher performance, lower energy depletion, higher storage/memory and higher speed processing
capability compared to the old-generation. Hence, the new features of next-generation sensor nodes have the capability for
multimedia data processing and real-time routing over WMSN. More importantly, WMSNs can be utilized in applications
that required real-time multimedia data forwarding such as reporting vehicle traffic problems (vehicle accidents, traffic
violations and traffic congestion), target tracking, airport security, advanced health care delivery, automated assistance
to elderly telemedicine, and industrial process control. However, second-generation sensor nodes are still constrained in
battery resource and communication bitrate [3].
The topology construction of a WMSN is depicted in Fig. 1. In this figure, WMSN consists of different types of sensor nodes:
multimedia sensor board (equipped with a miniature multimedia camera), traditional sensor board (router) and sink node

E-mail address: engadel2003@hotmail.com.

1 Member, IEEE.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2017.01.010
1574-1192/ 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
496 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

Fig. 1. WMSN architecture.

which has an upper connection to the Internet services. All sensor nodes are disseminated in the event monitoring region
and they organized a multi-hop ad-hoc network [3,4]. The sensor node can be stimulated upon receiving a request from sink
to provide multimedia information about the event area, or may function autonomously in routing multimedia information
through multi-hop to the sink. Upon sink receives the multimedia data from sensors that distributed in the target area, the
remote users can access the stored/real-time data through the Internet network. The transceiver in sensor nodes is specified
based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which is Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks (LR-WPANs) [4].
There are two scenarios for multimedia streaming over WMSN: real-time multimedia data streaming and stored
multimedia data streaming. The first situation is typical for real-time video applications where the source sensor node
transmits the multimedia stream in real-time. For real-time streaming over WMSN, there is a rigorous constraint to preserve
the end-to-end delay very small (typically few hundreds of milliseconds), whereas in a playback applications much larger
delay can be tolerated (up to several seconds) [5]. The end-to-end frame delay can be determined as the delay between
the sending a frame from the source node and its availability at the sink. In this research, the real-time multimedia data
streaming is considered which means the packets are sent according to specific end-to-end deadlines.
The MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, and H.265 are based on the idea of reducing the file size, bit rate by the use of both statistical
and subjective redundancies that produced by the encoder. The multimedia views can be divided into several numbers of
picture sequences that are called group of picture (GOP) in which the GOP might have three different types of frames: Intra-
coded frame (I-frame), predicted frame (P-frame) and bidirectional frame (B-frame). The most important frame is I-frame
which is encoded individually, hence, the I-frame size is the largest frame compared to other types of frames. This is essential
because it holds most of the important multimedia information. Therefore, the GOP is useless if I-frame is lost. In addition,
P-frame is encoded with respect to the nearest previous I or P-frames. B-frames are encoded using prediction of both a past
and future of I and P-frames. Moreover, GOP period determines the number of consecutive pictures within a coded video
stream. Increasing the GOP period will increase the number of P-frame coded.
Due to the resource constraints in all types of sensor nodes such as data rate, processing capability, battery, and memory,
each sensor node should implement a reliable and the power saving approach of communication layers. Moreover, the
challenges of carrying multimedia traffic are the lack of QoS guarantee in terms of imperceptible video, frame delivery ratio,
energy consumption, and end-to-end delay. The demand QoS for multimedia transmission over WMSN increases enormous
challenges such as time-varying channel conditions, limited resources, tight delay constraints, high bandwidth demand and
complexity coding technique.

1.1. Problem statement

This paper will be mainly focused on two main problems in WMSN which are highly bursty of multimedia data streaming
and variable bitrate (VBR) real-time routing:
High Burst of Multimedia Data Streaming. The multimedia data streaming is frequently bursty and the wireless
channel capacity is varying due to interference, noise, low power and modulation capabilities of the sensor. In addition,
the multimedia sensors have a limited input/output buffer and when data arrives too fast, the buffer will overflow and
some data packets will be lost, resulting in poor quality. Therefore, efficient utilization of the wireless channel bandwidth
is highly required. Moreover, the traditional traffic shaping control such as token bucket and a leaky bucket suffered from
strong deficiencies occur at the peak rate and fixed output rate controls. Accordingly, an adaptive traffic shaping is required
to design a novel solution for forwarding VBR video traffic.
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 497

VBR Real-time Routing. Since variable traffic of multimedia data routing could cause enormous of congestion over the
network, a particular traditional real-time forwarding is not a professional way for sending multimedia over WMSN as it will
generate high buffering delay in restricted queues of the forwarding nodes. Moreover, multimedia real-time data routing is
affected by high data loss and unreliable availability of connection. These troubles impose us to perform multipath routing
that can provide high resistance against the channel and congestion error. Thus, VBR real-time routing protocols require
carefully resource management system, capable energy management and real-time routing management.
The aim of this paper is presenting a novel solution algorithm to solve these two problems.

1.2. Summary of contributions

This paper reports the following contributions. First, it proposes an efficient dynamic traffic shaping mechanism for real-
time video streaming. The dynamic traffic shaping controls the amount and the rate of the traffic sent to the network by
adjusting the subsequent data rate based on the buffer size, input traffic rate and the output traffic rate. Second, it proposes
an efficient real-time video streaming routing protocol (RTVP) over WMSN. RTVP uses a dynamic runtime cost calculation
to select the next hop(s) of intermediate node(s). In addition, RTVP uses a multipath routing as a default routing based
on packet priority to forward a multimedia data packet to the sink. It classifies packet (I or P/B) based on the content
of video information and it selects the reliable path to forward high priority I-packet. Finally, it proposes a mechanism
to detect and avoid path interference. RTVP used a novel idea that can switch from single path to multipath forwarding
and vice versa based on congestion and traffic load on the intermediate node. H.264 has been chosen as a preferred
compression mechanism because H.264 provides low complexity, a modest file size for longer recording time and suitable
for limited bandwidth network transmission compared to H.265 and MPEG-4 [6]. In order to achieve low processing power
consumption, the optimal values of GOP size, search range, number of reference frames and quantization parameters are
investigated and recommended.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 will present related work on the traffic rate shaping and real-
time routing over WMSN. The system design of complete mechanism will be described in Sections 3 and 4 will describe the
simulation and test bed results discussion. Finally, Section 5 will conclude the paper.

2. Related work

Since the main aim of this article is to develop a real-time routing with an adaptive traffic shaping for multimedia
streaming over next-generation of WMSN, the related work entry focuses on the research studies that concern two things:
traffic shaping and real-time routing. Moreover, the main reason of highlight the following research studies that there are
developed based on WMSN characteristic. Therefore, the related research can be classified as follows.

2.1. Traffic shaping in WMSN

H.B. Kazemian proposed a video transmission mechanism called an intelligent video streaming transmission over ZigBee
and Bluetooth [7,8]. In this research, a traffic shaping queue was developed to avoid unnecessary excess of MPEG multimedia
stream over the ZigBee channel. A Neural-Fuzzy (NF) system was introduced by adjusting traffic shaping queue to remove
intolerable delay of the VBR encoded multimedia and to confirm the data to the token buckets convention prior inflowing
to the ZigBee channel.
M.F. Alam et al. proposed Traffic shaping for MPEG video transmission over the next generation Internet [9]. The
authors developed a systematic method of the traffic shaper based on a token bucket mechanism to study the transmission
specifications of MPEG compressed video streams over the guaranteed service (GS).
Arne Lie et al. proposed Evalvid-RA: trace driven simulation of rate adaptive MPEG-4 VBR video [10]. The authors
presented a solution for generating real adaptive MPEG-4 streaming traffic, which used the quantized scale for regulating
the transmission rate. A feedback based VBR rate controller is applied at simulation run-time, which supported TCP-Friendly
Rate Control (TFRC) and a proprietary congestion control system named P-AQM.
M. Rahmani proposed traffic shaping algorithm for resource-efficient in-vehicle communication [11]. The traffic shaping
algorithm in [11] outperformed traffic shapers with resource usage that applied to VBR video sources in the double star
topology.
Wang et al. proposed flexible and reliable traffic control protocol (FRTC) for wireless multimedia sensor networks [12].
According to the packet priorities, sensor nodes in one collision area can adjust their sending status adaptively. However,
the simulation results in MATLAB did not show the performance of FRTC over WMSN using standard IEEE 805.15.4.
The dynamic traffic rate shaping is essentially in WMSN to prevent the multimedia data loss due to sudden change
in channel bandwidth capacity. This problem is the main objective of this paper and was not elaborated in the previous
works [712].

2.2. Real-time routing in WMSN

Several real-time routing protocols over WMSNs are proposed in the literature [1324].
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Y. Cao et al. proposed Environment-aware CMT (e-CMT) with allowing the network situation to produce an efficient video
distribution approach over multi-homed WMSNs [14]. The e-CMT was developed using three components: Path Quality-
aware Model (PQM) that utilized to calculate path quality; Adaptive Retransmission Trigger (ART) that used to predicate
packet loss ratio; and Congestion-avoid Data Distributor (CDD) that aids to activate limited reliable retransmission that will
overcome the congestion problems in wireless transmission.
L. Shu et al. proposed a two-phase geographic greedy forwarding (TPGF) routing for WMSN [15]. The first phase is used to
discover the promising routing path while the second phase is used to optimize the establishing of routing path by utilizing
the minimum number of hops techniques with energy consumption. Unlike many existing geographic routing algorithms,
TPGF does not adopt face routing to avoid holes.
The MPMPS (multi-priority multipath selection) routing protocol [16] is an extension of TPGF. MPMPS considers the
fact that not every path discovered by TPGF can be utilized for sending multimedia because a lengthy routing path will
cause extensive end-to-end transmission delay which may not be appropriate for multimedia flooding. However, TPGF and
MPMPS are offline multipath routing protocols.
D. Kandris proposed an energy aware hierarchical routing protocol PEMuR which combined with smart video packet
scheduling algorithm [17]. PEMuR routing protocol allows selecting the optimal energy efficient routing paths which
controls the network traffic rate according to the energy remains in the nodes and avoids ineffective data forwarding through
using of an energy threshold.
M. Chen proposed directional geographical routing (DGR) for real-time multimedia streaming in wireless sensor
networks [18]. The authors combined forward error correction (FEC) coding with a multipath DGR. In order to transmit
parallel FEC-protected H.26L real-time multimedia streams over a limited bandwidth, unreliable network medium, DGR
constructs an application specific of multiple disjointed paths for a WMSN.
MM-SPEED is an extension of SPEED algorithm [19]. It was developed to provide numerous communication speed rates
and to support confidential stability. Real-time messages are arranged with deadlines emphases on the problem of offering
timeliness guarantees for multi-hop routing in a real-time sensor application. Messages deadlines are based on the authority
of sensor data and the start of the processing task at the destination.
A. Ahmed et al. developed a real-time with load submission (RTLD) routing protocol for WSN [20]. RTLD estimated the
optimal forwarder node in accordance with packet velocity over one-hop; the packet link quality and remaining energy.
A. Ahmed et al. developed a real-time routing protocol with mobility support and load distribution (RTMLD) for mobile
wireless sensor networks [21]. RTMLD used corona as a sensor node location determination. The optimal path to the
destination is determined based on intermediate sensor nodes that have optimal RSSI, battery level and delay over one-
hop.
A. Bradai et al. proposed Energy-efficient Mechanism for Multimedia Streaming over Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks
(EMCOS) [22]. EMCOS clusters the MWSN nodes into different stable clusters based on the geographic positions and
prediction of the channel availability. Once the clusters are built, a cluster head is elected for each cluster in a way which
preserves the cluster energy by considering the energy utilization of all cluster members. Further, to ensure the content
delivery from the source to the sink, a routing/channel selection mechanism has been proposed. The main remark of EMCOS
is the processing delay to develop a cluster architecture in real-time is very high compared to the multimedia constraint
delay.
R. Bruno and M. Nurchis developed an efficient data collection in multimedia vehicular sensing platforms [23]. In this
work, the authors were particularly concerned about the data redundancy caused by capturing camera snapshots of the
streets to support traffic monitoring and urban surveillance tasks. Submodular optimization techniques have been exploited
to design efficient and robust data collection schemes for multimedia vehicular sensor networks. However, the simulation
studies are very simple and processing time is not suitable of real-time multimedia stream which should be less than 400 ms.
C. Liu et al. proposed a multi-layer experimental study of multimedia and QoS communication in wireless mesh
networks [24]. The authors designed and implemented a campus test-bed for supporting multimedia traffic in mobile
wireless mesh networks, and investigated possible improvements on a number of cross-layer adaptive rate control (CLARC)
to enable multimedia transmission over wireless networks with QoS support. However, the previous routing protocols did
not consider the property of multimedia data stream traffic, which has a naturally VBR, therefore, the limited bandwidth
characteristics of WMSN will be congested with high burst. Hence the packet loss ratio was increased in all previous routing
protocols. Accordingly, adaptive traffic shaping is essential while design routing protocol for multimedia stream over WMSN.

3. System design of traffic shaping real-time framework

The proposed framework consists of optimal complexity configuration of multimedia coding system, an adaptive real-
time traffic shaping, and reliable real-time multipath routing protocol as described in Fig. 2.

3.1. Optimal encoding complexity

The first stage of the proposed multimedia streaming over WMSN is multimedia compression by means of optimal
configuration parameters of H.264 mechanism which will provide less processing complexity with an allowance of energy
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 499

Fig. 2. Block diagram of proposed traffic shaping real-time framework.

consumption. The Quarter Common Intermediate Format (QCIF) is chosen as an input video resolution, which encoded
using 2025 pictures per second (fps) with each picture holds 144 lines and 176 pixels per line. The QCIF input resolution
is selected in this research because of the small size with highest fidelity frames output which is convenient for WMSN
constraints. Moreover, H.264 should adapt video streams to the available bandwidth (250 kbps) by adjusting GOP size,
quantization parameter (QP), number of reference frames (NRF) and search range (SR).
The optimal complexity coding for MPEG-4 and H264/AVC are proposed in [2527]. The finding in [25,26] concluded
that in order to achieve optimal encoding complexity in multi-hop WMSN, the GOP should be more than 8, QP should be
between 26 and 34, and SR should be between 4 and 8. However, it was realized that the overall energy depletion at the
multimedia sensor nodes depends on the number of hops between the source and the sink. Moreover, the finding in [27]
concluded that the optimal encoding complexity is achieved when SR and NRF were set to 1.

3.2. Adaptive traffic shaping

The multimedia traffic that produced by the original source node should be conformed to the physical layer data rate of
WMSN specification. Moreover, in order to fit the limited bandwidth of transceiver in WMSN, an adaptive traffic shaper is
used to reshape VBR traffic so that the traffic stream sent out to the network is less burst than the original multimedia stream.
Therefore, the main objective of the proposed adaptive traffic shaper is to minimize, rather than remove the burstiness of
the multimedia data stream and to find a trade-off between buffering delay and channel capacity. In order to achieve this
objective, a token bucket traffic shaping is used with adaptive algorithm amendment as described as follows:

3.2.1. Token bucket traffic shaper

Token bucket is an algorithm to regulate the amount and the rate of burst traffic that sent to the network. It allows some
burstiness in the outgoing traffic, but limits the maximum burst size. As can be shown in Fig. 3, the token bucket mechanism
consists of a pseudo-buffer (bucket) of size b Bytes (maximum burst size), which is filling up by tokens at fixed rate r and
the output token rate is varied between the peak bucket rate P and the average rate r. Each token represents permission to
send a fixed number of bits into the network. Likewise, the token bucket algorithm allows idle hosts to collect credit for the
upcoming use in the form of tokens. The token bucket is working as follows:
The input buffer would receive the packets at a VBR that are stored in FIFO order.
Once the bucket has enough tokens for one packet, that packet will be forwarded to the network and the consumed
tokens will be removed from the bucket.
If the input buffer is filled up with packets, the new arrival packets will be dropped. Likewise, if the bucket is filled up,
the new arrival tokens are discarding.
The main drawback of the token bucket algorithm is the difficulty to control the peak traffic rate, which causes the
output rate exceeds the maximum data rate of the channel bandwidth. This variation causes packet dropping at output
buffer or at channel forwarding which will affect the QoS performance of the multimedia data routing. In addition, the actual
transmission rate is varied due to the attenuation of signal strength. Hence, an adaptive traffic shaping rate is required to
solve the previous problems.

3.2.2. Adaptive token bucket

In order to design the optimal solution for traffic shaping problem, the traffic shaper algorithm should consider the
following issues:
500 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

Fig. 3. Token bucket traffic shaper.

Input buffer Overflow: Input buffer size is limited in WMSN and should provide fewer packets discarded.
Delay Optimization: minimum delay experienced at the shaper buffer is required.
Consideration of the transmission rate variation: in reality, the channel capacity (maximum bitrate) varies with the
time in wireless communication because it is affected by the attenuation of the wireless signal. In addition, the output
packets of token bucket do not have any peak rate control which causes some outgoing rate exceeds the peak rate P.
The proposed adaptive traffic shaper algorithm is developed to overcome the drawback of token bucket mechanism and to
tackle the previous issues in order to ensure high QoS to the proposed routing protocol over WMSN. The idea of the proposed
adaptive traffic shaping is described as follows:
a. Assumption
The following assumption is utilized in the proposed adaptive traffic shaping:
The initial average data rate, r0 , for an MmNn GOP sequence can be written as in [9]:
n
n
RI + n m
RB + m
1 RP
r0 = (1)
n
where RI , RP and RB are I-frame, P-frame and B-frame data rate respectively; n is the number of frames in the GOP and m
is the IP or PP frame interval. The GOP period is n/f where f is the frame rate. At the beginning of the transmission, the
input buffer is empty and the token bucket is full of tokens. The traffic shaper transmits the first burst using peak rate P for
a period determined by the bucket size as can be shown in Fig. 4. We assume that the initial value of bucket size (b) is quite
enough to process at least one GOP data size; and P is equal to RI which should be less than the channel capacity (CC ). In
case if RI is greater than CC, P should be equal to CC. Since multimedia sensor node has a limitation in memory size, the input
buffer is assumed to store a limited number of GOP. The input buffer reaches its maximum of packets at the end of arrival of
I-frame which is equal to time t = 1/f . Also, we assume that the transmission of the I-frame starts at the same time when
the shaper begins sending at the peak rate P. The maximum delay that the frames in a GOP can be experienced is estimated
by the delay introduced by the I-frame which can be calculated as the time difference between the end of departure and the
end of arrival of I-frame as follows in [9]:

RI 1
TI = . (2)
f P f
As it can be noted from (2), the minimum delay can be achieved when the peak rate P converges to RI .
b. Adaptive traffic shaping algorithm
In order to avoid input buffer overflow due to the variation of input data rate, the token arrival rate r and the peak rate
P should be adapted based on the channel capacity and input buffer status. If the arriving packets enter the input buffer in
the highly burst mode, the token arrival rate r and the peak rate P should be increased to the new adaptive values as:
n
n
RI + n m
RB + m
1 RP
rA = and PA = RI (3)
n
where RI , RP and RB are the new data rate of I-frame, P-frame and B-frame respectively; PA and rA are the adapted peak
rate and token arrival rate respectively. The channel capacity (CC ) for wireless communication can be calculated based on
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 501

Fig. 4. Architecture of proposed adaptive traffic shaper.

Fig. 5. Algorithm of adaptive traffic shaper.

Shannons Channel Theorem as:

CC = B log2 (1 + SNR) (4)

where CC measured in bps, B is the channel bandwidth measured in hertz, SNR is the signal to noise ratio measured in watts.
As can be observed from (4), CC is varied when the SNR is changed. In order to prevent the exceeding peak rate P, a leaky
bucket (bucket rate P, bucket size b) is applied after the token bucket as depicted in Fig. 4. In this figure, the input packet
rate which consists of RI , RP and RB is varied based on the input GOP. Therefore, the average data rate r and the peak data
rate P should be adopted to avoid the input buffer overflow. The algorithm of the adaptive traffic shaper is depicted in Fig. 5.
In this algorithm, the main inputs are CC and VBR arrival packets while the main outputs are adaptive peak rate and average
rate (PA and rA ). The initial value of I-frame data rate variation (S) is set to zero and P is set to RI (if CC is greater than RI .
In case if RI is greater than CC, P should be equal to CC ). Frequently RI , RP , RB , PA and rA are calculated when a new GOP is
received. RI is calculated as multiplying the I-frame size by GOP period. Also, PA is set to RI and r is set to rA if RI is greater
than RI and less than CC. In case if RI is greater than CC, P should be equal to CC and the difference between I-frame rates is
stored and accumulated in S until CC is changed to a higher value. Moreover, if CC is greater than (RI + S), P is set to (PA + S)
and r is set to (rA + S). Therefore, the variation in I-frame rate is manipulated when the CC is increased which can be used to
tackle the burst mode of I-frame. However, if CC decreases for several GOPs periods, the input buffer will be filled up with
packets and the new arrival packets will be dropped. The adaptive traffic shaper algorithm ensures high QoS performance
for WMSN as will be shown in the experimental section of this research.
502 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

3.3. Reliable multipath real-time routing protocol

RTVP is a real-time video stream routing protocol which is developed to forward a multimedia data packet through
multipath to the sink. It is designed based on our previous work which is RTMLD [21] routing protocol. RTVP consists of eight
main functions that include corona mechanism, neighbourhood management, power management, routing management,
packet classifier, dynamic multipath forwarding, path interference handler and next hop cost specification as depicted in
Fig. 6. In corona structure, the complete network is divided into coronas centred on the sink. The corona mechanism is an
essential part of RTVP because it is used to determine the corona identification (C_ID) of all sensor nodes in WMSN as shown
in Fig. 7. Using C_ID, sensor node can forward the multimedia data packet from a source that has high C_ID to zero C_ID (sink
node). The power management specifies the suitable power and saving situation of the transceiver for each sensor node. The
neighbourhood management determines a set of forwarding applicant nodes and maintains a neighbour table that records
all next hop candidate nodes. The routing management calculates the optimal next hop forwarding, creates a forwarding
decision and triggers a routing problem handler.
The main differences between RTVP and RTMLD are explained in the following sections. RTVP has four novel routing
components compared to RTMLD which are described as follows:

3.3.1. Packet classifier

The packet classification steps are explained as follows:

Step 1: H.264 video coding system generates frames trace file that contains details about frames coding such as frame type,
frame size, frame id, frame rate and sample rate.
Step 2: The RTVP packet classifier uses the frame trace file to categorize the multimedia data packet based on frame type
into three packet categories which are I, P and B packets. It receives a complete frame from the transport layer
(RTP/UDP), and it reads the frame details, i.e., frame type.
Step 3: The received frame is fragmented into small packet based on maximum transfer unit (MTU) which is 128 bytes in
WMSN. Also, the priority and packet type are assigned to the fragment packet header based on the frame type.
Step 4: In order to resolve the interference between packet types, the classifier will store each type of packet on a specific
buffer, e.g., I-packet buffer.

3.3.2. Dynamic multipath forwarding

The optimal next hop calculation mechanism is used to determine the three optimal next hops (one path for each packet)
toward the sink. The path forwarding cost from the source to the sink is calculated as the sum of individual the cost of optimal
next hop neighbours. Therefore, the optimal path between the source and the sink is defined as the path that consists of
optimal forwarding sensor nodes. Hence, the most optimal path is used to forward I-packets, the second optimal path is
used to forward P-packets and the third optimal path is used to forward B-packets as shown in Fig. 6. Moreover, multipath
forwarding suffers from a famous problem called path interference. According to Fig. 7, the three paths subject to four types
of interference which are highlighted in the grey areas A, B, C and D. In order to solve the problem of path interference,
RTVP routing protocol at the congestion node between paths uses a novel idea that allows highest priority packets to use
the reliable path and sends stop feedback control packet to the source of the lowest priority packet. Upon the sensor node
that forwards lower priority packet receives the stop feedback control packet; it will change the forwarding path to the next
optimal path. It is interesting to note that RTVP at congestion node will also forward the lower priority packet and sends a
feedback control packet for each packet received. Fig. 7 shows an example of path interference and how RTVP at congestion
node can solve this problem.

Path Interference at area A: the first case of path interference can be occurred in the area A in which I-packet path
interferes with the B-packet path. RTVP at the joint node of area A will forward both packets and send feedback control
packet to the source of the B-packet. Upon receiving feedback control packet, the sensor node that sent the B-packet will
select a different path.
Path Interference at area B: the second case of path interference can be occurred in the area B in which I-packet path
interferes with the P-packet path. RTVP at the joint node of area B will forward both packets and send feedback control
packet to the source of the P-packet. The sensor node that sent P-packet will select alternative path.
Path Interference at area C: the fourth case of path interference can be occurred in the area C in which P-packet path
interferes with the B-packet path. RTVP at the joint node of area C will forward both packets and send feedback control
packet to the source of the B-packet. The node that sent the B-packet will select a new path.
Path Interference at area D: the third case of path interference can be occurred in the area D in which I-packet path
interferes with P-packet and B-packet paths. RTVP at the joint node of area D will forward all packets and send two
feedback control packets one to the source node of the P-packet and the other one to the source node of the B-packet.
The nodes that sent the P-packet and the B-packet will select alternative path.
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 503

Fig. 6. Block diagram of RTVP routing protocol architecture.

Fig. 7. Path interference problem and solution in RTVP.

3.3.3. Next hop cost specification

Different measures for next hop selection are used in the outdated real-time routing protocols. These measures are
delay, link quality, channel capability, power consumption, the probability of collision, the probability of retransmission, the
battery level of next hop node, and the available buffer size [28]. However, In order to perform dynamic optimal routing path
estimation, the RTVP calculates three parameters called end-to-end (ETE) packet delay, Received Signal Strength Indicator
(RSSI) and remaining energy (remaining battery level) for next hop neighbours. Eventually, the routing management will
transmit a data packet to the next hop neighbour that has a maximum cost calculation. The optimal forwarding (OF) cost is
calculated as follows [20,21]:

RSSI max Vbatt D
OF = max _1 + _2 + _3 1 where _1 + _2 + _3 = 1 (5)
RSSI Vmbatt DETE

where RSSI max is the received signal strength at the location 1 m away from the source (45 dBm); Vmbatt is the maximum
battery voltage for a sensor node (3.2 V). D is the average of one hop delay and DETE is ETE delay for multimedia data packets
which was set to 250 ms. The values of _1, _2 and _3 are measured based on an exhaustive search model that developed
on Network Simulator-2 (NS-2) [29]. The number of probable values for is 11 (from 0.0 to 1.0) and the number of wholly
trials in _1 + _2 + _3 = 1 is 66 [29]. The optimal trial among the 66 trials has been measured using NS-2 simulation with
four styles of grid network topology which are small density, medium density, high density with one source and high density
with numerous sources. In each type of topology, three types of data traffic (slow, moderate and high) are studied [29]. The
finding in our previous work shows that there are four trials in (5) give high QoS performance results in terms of delivery
504 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

Fig. 8. Dynamic weightage and prolong lifetime of WMSN (a) the neighbour table based on Eq. (6)(D); (b) the neighbour table based on Eq. (6)(B).

ratio, ETE delay and energy consumption.

RSSI max D
OF = 0.1 + 0.4 Vbatt /Vmbatt + 0.5 1 (A)
RSSI DETE

RSSI max D
OF = 0.2 + 0.4 Vbatt /Vmbatt + 0.4 1 (B)
RSSI DETE
(6)
RSSI max D
OF = 0.4 + 0.3 Vbatt /Vmbatt + 0.3 1 (C)
RSSI DETE

RSSI max D
OF = 0.6 + 0.2 Vbatt /Vmbatt + 0.2 1 (D).
RSSI DETE
Although, any one of them can be chosen for routing decision in RTVP, (6)(A) and (6)(B) did not guarantee selecting of next
hop with highest link quality. Eqs. (6)(C) and (6)(D) ensure higher link quality, moderate load distribution and ETE packet
delay. In our previous works RTLD and RTMLD [20,21], (6)(D) is preferred because it has the highest weightage (0.6) for link
quality. The higher link quality weight ensures high routing performance in terms of delivery ratio and energy consumption.
However, the selected equation in our previous work was static during the experimental time while in reality the three
parameters in the (6) are variable. In addition, the battery voltage value in the preferred next hops is gradually decreased,
which will shorten the lifetime of the WMSN. For this reason, the RTVP routing protocol utilized multi-weightage in the (6)
during the experimental time. When the remaining power becomes less than 50% in the intermediate sensor node, RTVP
preferred the equation that has a high weightage value of the remaining battery level such as (6)(C) or (6)(B). This essentially
will prolong the lifetime of sensor nodes in WMSN.

3.3.4. Influence of change weightage online

In order to show how the change of weightage in (6) will affect the lifetime of WMSN, the following comprehensive
example is described. Fig. 8 shows an example of 6 sensor nodes, which are the original source node, the final sink node, the
forwarder sensor node A and three neighbours of node A. As mentioned before, (6)(D) is selected in our prior works [20,21].
In Fig. 8(a), the neighbour table of forwarder sensor node A is created based on (6)(D) which will select next hop neighbour
1 as an optimal selection. However, sensor node 1 has an energy expiration problem which will affect the lifetime of
WMSN. Moreover, sensor nodes 2 and 3 have higher power remaining, appropriate link quality and less ETE delay. In
addition, (6)(D) gives more weightage to link quality and less weightage to remaining power and ETE delay. In contrast,
Fig. 8(b) shows the influence of replacing (6)(D) with (6)(B). Since the remaining power parameter becomes very critical
after 50% of energy used, the weightage of remaining power should be selected as high as possible. Therefore, (6)(B) is the
suitable equation in order to overcome the energy expiration problem. As it can be seen in Fig. 8(b), according to (6)(B) the
forwarder sensor node A will select sensor nodes 3 which has the highest power remaining, appropriate link quality and
less ETE delay. In contrast to (6)(D), sensor nodes 1 has a less optimal forwarding value which means it will not be selected
as optimal intermediate node and thus increasing the lifetime of WMSN. Hence, the funding in this example concludes that
the optimal forwarding selection should not be static based on (6)(D) because the energy expiration problem is essentially
in WMSN due to huge multimedia data forwarding. In addition, the routing criteria should be dynamic and the weightage
of these criteria should by change online during a certain specific period.
The algorithm of online-weightage updating is described in Fig. 9. As it can be seen in Fig. 9, there are four cases of optimal
forwarding based on (6) which are (6)(A), (6)(B), (6)(C), and (6)(D). The four cases depend on the situation of remaining power
(RP) in the battery of the candidate node. Initially, (6)(D) is used in order to select OF sensor node among all candidates until
the RP of selected candidate reaches to 0.75 of the maximum power of the battery. The proposed algorithm has to refresh
the neighbour table of selected candidate every 30 s which is discovered using exhaustive simulation works. However, this
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 505

Fig. 9. Algorithm of online-weightage updating.

short refreshing time is mainly due to the nature of multimedia stream that required to forward huge multimedia data
within short time. When the RP of selected candidate decreases between 25% and 50% compared to the maximum power of
the battery, the OF will use (6)(C) to select the optimal candidate. Also, if the RP of selected candidate decreases between 50%
and 60% compared to the maximum power of the battery, the OF will use (6)(B) to select the optimal candidate. Moreover,
if the RP of selected candidate decreases more than 60% compared to the maximum power of the battery, the OF will use
(6)(A) to select the optimal candidate.

4. Simulation experiments

In order to measure the performance of the proposed adaptive traffic shaping real-time routing mechanism, the stages
of simulation experiment will be divided into three phases which are input file pre-processing, NS-2 configuration and
topology and output file post-processing as shown in Fig. 10. The simulation phases are explained in details as follows:

4.1. Multimedia input file pre-processing

The first stage of multimedia streaming test bed is input file pre-processing which will encode the QCIF multimedia file
to the data trace file using Evalvid application [30]. The data trace file will be transmitted from the sensor node 43 to the
sink 0 in the NS-2 grid topology as shown in Fig. 10. Evalvid framework is utilized to perform the pre-processing stage as
follows:
Video Encoding: uncompressed video is typically represented in the YUV 4:2:0 format which is the ideal format of many
available video encoders. To generate the multimedia encoding from YUV format to the H.264 format, an x264 program
is utilized with an optimal configuration.
Video Packetized: the generated file from x264 will be packetized into.mp4 file using MP4Box program.
Video Tracing File: the video tracing file (st_) is produced using mp4trace program. Mp4trace generates a sender tracing
file that records the significance information about I, P, and B-frames such as the number of frames for each type, size of
each frame, and the frame transmission time.
NS-2 Processing: the video tracing file is introduced to the NS-2 simulator as the input file of the experimental test bed.

4.2. NS-2 simulation of WMSN

The application layer has been developed based on the specifications of the Lotus sensor from MEMSIC [31]. The Lotus
sensor board is an advanced wireless sensor board designed using the low power ARM7 Cortex M3 CPU which includes the
best features of IRIS, TelosB and Imote2 onto a single board [31]. Lotus platform is configured at the factory to run RTOS (Real
Time Operating System) with ARM Cortex M3 32-bit processor and 64 kB SRAM, 512 kB Flash, 64 MB Serial Flash. In order
to achieve optimal power consumption and processing capability to satisfy the QoS of WMSNs, MoteWorks 3.4 software is
506 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

Table 1
Simulation parameters.
Parameter IEEE 802.15.4

Propagation model Shadowing

Path loss exponent 2.5
Shadowing deviation (dB) 4.0
Reference distance (m) 1.0
Maximum packet size 100 bytes
Buffer size 500 packets
Maximum transmission rate 250 kbps
PhyType Phy/WirelessPhy/802_ 15_4
MacType Mac/802_15_4
freq_ 2.4e+9
Initial energy 3.3 J
Transmission power 1 mW
Transport layer RTP with Evalvid/MyUDP
Traffic QCIF multimedia resolution

used to program Lotus sensor board. Table 1 shows the NS-2 simulation parameters that used to run all experiments. There
are three propagation models in NS-2, which are the free space model, two-ray ground reflection model and the shadowing
model [32]. The free space model and the two-ray model predict the received power as a deterministic function of distance.
They represent the communication range in an ideal circle. In reality, the received power at a certain distance is a random
variable due to multi-path propagation effects, which are also known as fading effects. A more general and widely-used
model is called the shadowing model. In this work, 121 nodes are scattered in the area (110 m 110 m) using a grid style
as depicted in Fig. 10. To maximize the count of hops between the multimedia source and the sink, the multimedia source
node was nominated from the upper right and the sink from the down left of the network topology. Consequently, a node
numbered as 43 is a source node and a node numbered as 0 is a sink. Since the bandwidth in WMSN is the crucial constraint
in WMSN (250 kbps) which should be utilized to avoid packet dropping and smooth multimedia streaming. Therefore, frame
B (or packet B) is omitted on the simulated GOP because it consumes high bandwidth based on the length of GOP with less
impact on fidelity criteria of the multimedia streaming. Also, B-frame is encoded using prediction of both a past and future
of I and P-frames which it needs to wait for the next I or P frame. Moreover, in order to implement the optimal encoding
complexity, Evalvid application is used with selected configuration parameters.
RTVP is compared with three baseline protocols which are multiple message speeds (MM-SPEED), real-time routing with
load distribution based on location management (RTLD), and real-time with mobility support based on corona structure
(RTMLD). MM-SPEED and RTLD are essentially developed for fixed WSN; however, RTMLD is developed for mobile WSN.
The feedback control and differentiated reliability in MM-SPEED routing protocol have not been studied in this paper
because they required alteration at the data link layer standard protocols. The QoS in terms of delivery ratio, ETE delay,
and normalized communication energy has been studied, whereas the multimedia data has been routed through multi-hop
in the 11 11 sensors grid topology as illustrated in Fig. 10.

4.2.1. Adaptive traffic shaping and RTVP coding in NS-2

EvalVid is a framework and a toolkit for evaluation of transmission distorted video. It has a modular structure which
exchange users decision in both the underlying transmission system as well as the codecs in real experimental setups [30].
The proposed framework is classified according to the code development into two parts: code developed from scratch such
as RTVP with multipath forwarding and code amended based on Evalvid framework such as adaptive traffic shaping and
packet classifier.

4.3. Output multimedia file post-processing

The output multimedia file post-processing is the last stage where the Evalvid application uses etmp4 and ffmpeg
programs to rebuild the output multimedia based on the input and output tracing files that generated during network
simulation. In this process, the PSNR of the rebuilt multimedia file calculated and compared with the original multimedia
source. Moreover, the information generated from the sender and the receiver tracing files is utilized to estimate the frame
delay which is defined as the difference between the time when the first packet of a frame is sent and the time when the last
packet of the same frame is received. There are many other performance metrics which are used to evaluate the proposed
framework such as end-to-end delay, cumulative jitter, and frame loss rate.

5. Simulation results and discussion

The performance assessment of the proposed work is investigated in many different situations and the QoS is compared
with the baseline routing protocols. The test bed experiments are conducted in the following situations: applying optimal
encoding complexity at the application layer; using adaptive traffic rate, dynamic weightage of forwarding parameters,
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 507

Fig. 10. Proposed network simulation model.

Table 2
Basic information about testing video clips.
Video clip in QCIF (176 144) No. of frames Motion content

Akiyo 300 Low

Foreman 300 High
Mobile 300 High
Container 300 Low
Hall 330 Medium
Carphone 382 Medium
Salesman 449 Medium
Claire 494 Low
Highway 2000 High

applying real-time routing with and without multipath forwarding. Also, the input QCIF video has been selected based on
nine real-time video clips from the video coders website [33]. The selected input video files are Salesman, Akiyo, Claire, Hall,
Carphone, Foreman, Container Mobile and Highway. Moreover, the motion content of these video clips can be classified into
three groups: high motion/scene complexity, medium motion/scene complexity and low motion/scene complexity. Table 2
provides an approximate content classification and the basic information of each video clip.

5.1. Optimal complexity for encoding configuration

The overall power consumption in WMSN can be estimated as a summation of the coding power that wasting at all
source nodes and the communication power consuming at all routing sensor nodes. Moreover, the encoding complexity
consists of five basic operational units: motion estimation and compensation, intra prediction, transform/quantization and
the inverse, in-loop filter and entropy coding. The finding in [27] concluded that the optimal level of encoding complexity
has been achieved using adjusting a set of parameters that consist of SR, NRF, motion estimation algorithm (ME), QP, GOP,
entropy coding based on context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC), Adaptive Deblocking Filter (Deblock),
Rate-distortion optimization (RDO) and Chroma ME. According to the experimental works in [27], the optimal H.264 encoder
parameters that have minimal influence on the fidelity of the multimedia stream and altitude influence on the encoding
complexity are shown in Table 3.

5.2. Influence of adaptive traffic shaping on QoS performance

In this simulation, the QoS performance is evaluated in a condition whereby the neighbour table at each node does not
have any node in the neighbour table. The Evalvid-RA has been used with the baseline routing protocols in order to stimulate
the adaptive traffic rate. The Evalvid-RA is an updated and enhanced of Evalvid to support rate adaptive video stream in NS-
2 [10]. The simulation time has been set to the total time of sending video clip and the maximum simulation time has been
508 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

Table 3
H.264 encoder configuration option.
Complexity parameter H.264 configuration option Proposed optimized value

Motion estimation me (Dia,Hex,Umh,Esa) Hex or Dia

Quantization parameter (QP) qp (051) 2836
GOP keyint (1250) 15
CABAC no-cabac Disable
Deblock filter nodeblock; nf Disable/turn off
RDO subme (19) Disable RDO <6
Chroma ME nochromame Disable
Frame rate fps (1525) 1520
Search range merange 1
Number of reference frames ref 1

Table 4
ITU-R quality and impairment scale [34].
PSNR MOS Impairment

>37 5 (Excellent) Imperceptible

3137 4 (Good) Perceptible, but not annoying
2531 3 (Fair) Slightly annoying
2025 2 (Poor) Annoying
<20 1 (Bad) Very annoying

set to 2500 s. Moreover, all experiments were developed based on network configuration parameters in Table 1 and H.264
encoder was conducted based on configuration parameters in Table 3. The QoS performance in terms of delivery ratio, ETE
delay, and normalized communication energy has been studied. The results in Fig. 11(a) show that RTVP with adaptive traffic
shaper (ARTVP) experiences 15%18% higher delivery ratio than RTMLD; 7% than RTVP and 95% compared to RTLD and MM-
SPEED. This is mainly due to the following reasons. Firstly, ARTVP operates adaptive traffic shaping algorithm which uses
to tackle the burst mode of I-frame. Secondly, while ARTVP, RTVP and RTMLD routing protocols uses corona based real-
time forwarding, ARTVP and RTVP have a novel idea which is utilizing multipath forwarding with dynamic cost calculation
for selecting next hop neighbour. Thirdly, MM-SPEED and RTLD have failed to route real-time multimedia stream with VBR
burst traffic, which causes many multimedia data packets loss before arriving to the destination. Finally, most of multimedia
data packets are dropped due to the ETE delay overrides the real-time deadline which should be not more than 250 ms. In
addition, Fig. 11(b) shows ARTVP runs real-time routing for multimedia data packet over WMSN within a very short ETE
delay (about 170 ms on average) which is approximately threefold less compared to location based routing protocol (RTLD
and MM-SPEED) and 25% less compared to RTVP and 50% less than RTMLD. This is primarily because of the adaptive traffic
shaping algorithm and multipath forwarding mechanism in ARTVP and RTVP which reduce the congestion in a specific
path. Also, the location based routing protocols provide an undesirable delay which causes uncomfortable watching real-
time video. Moreover, the results in Fig. 11(c) illustrate that ARTVP and RTVP consumes very less energy per packet received
compared to RTLD, MMSPEED and RTMLD. This is because the number of lost frames in the baseline routing protocols is
high which causes the number of retransmitting packets is increased. Hence, the lost packets dissipate the energy of sensor
nodes.

5.3. Impact of proposed routing protocol in video quality evaluation

The main approach to estimate the output video quality is an objective quality measure which is described in detail by
ITU, ANSI and MPEG [34,35]. The objective fidelity criteria can be estimated using a mathematical equation that measures
the amount of data losing in the reconstructed (compressed/decompressed) image. It is convenient when comparing the
frame error to the amount of the output image. The subjective fidelity criteria that depend on the human quality impression
is specified based on a scale from 5 (best) to 1 (worst) as illustrated in Table 4. These scales are called a Mean Opinion Score
(MOS). However, the most well-known scheme to calculate the performance of video transmission is the peak signal to noise
ratio (PSNR) which calculates the ratio between the maximum power of a signal and the power of fidelity corrupting noise.
Table 4 shows PSNR to MOS conversion.
In order to study the influence of objective fidelity criteria during multimedia data routing using ARTVP, RTVP and
baseline routing protocols, the simulation experiment has been conducted using the video clips in Table 2 and optimal
complexity encoding configuration in Table 3. The results in Fig. 12 show that PSNR of location based routing varies between
12 and 18 dB, which reflects the very annoying and low fidelity of the reconstructed video. Therefore, according to the
Table 4, the reconstructed videos using location based routing protocols have bad MOS. Moreover, the results of Fig. 12
illustrate that the PSNR of RTMLD fluctuates between 22 and 26 dB, which reveals the annoying and bad fidelity of the
reconstructed video. Therefore, the reconstructed videos using RTMLD have poor MOS. In addition, this figure shows that
the PSNR of ARTVP and RTVP fluctuate between 30 and 41 dB, which reflects the excellent and good imperceptible of the
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 509

Fig. 11. Impact of adaptive traffic shaping on the QoS performance (a) delivery ratio; (b) average end-to end delay; (c) energy per frame.

Fig. 12. Impact of proposed routing protocol in video quality evaluation.

reconstructed video. However, ARTVP has an excellent fidelity of the reconstructed video compared to RTVP. PSNR for the
same video is varied within 5 dB, which causes a small reduction on the fidelity of the reconstructed video.

5.4. Influence of proposed routing on prolonging WMSN lifetime

The lifetime of WMSN can be measured using the amount of time before the first node runs out of battery power. As
illustrated in the comprehensive example in the Section 3, the dynamic change of the forwarding parameters weightage
prolongs the lifetime of WMSN. The following simulation provides evidence about prolonging WMSN lifetime using dynamic
weightage of routing parameters. In this simulation, a highway video clip with 2000 frames is used and the complexity
level is nominated as in Table 3 to study WMSN lifetime. In order to check which routing protocols will run out the
batteries of sensor nodes, the initial energy for the sensor batteries has been adjusted from 3.2 to 0.5 J. The simulation
510 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511

Fig. 13. Influence of proposed routing on prolonging WMSN lifetime (a) lifetime; (b) delivery ratio; (c) PSNR.

time has been set to the total time of sending video clip and the maximum simulation time has been set to 2500 s. The
simulation results in Fig. 13(a) show that ARTVP and RTVP prolongs the lifetime of WMSN approximate more than twofold
compared to RTMLD and approximate more than threefold compared to location based routing protocols (MMSPEED and
RTLD). This is mainly due to the baseline routing protocols suffered from depleting energy of the routing nodes which use
static weightage of forwarding parameters (RTLD and RTMLD), hence a routing hole problem is created. In contrast, ARTVP
and RTVP distributes the load of forwarding dynamically through optimal candidates to overcome routing holes problem
and hence, prolonging the WMSN lifetime. Moreover, the results in Fig. 13(b) show that ARTVP experiences around 23%
higher delivery ratio than RTVP and experiences about the threefold higher delivery ratio than RTMLD and fivefold higher
delivery ratio compared to location based routing protocols. This is essentially due to the static load distribution in the
baseline routing protocols (weightage of forwarding parameters is static during simulation) which causes premature energy
depletion in the forwarding nodes. In addition, shifting to recover path causes extra delay at the forwarding nodes. Therefore,
most of video frames are lost and frame loss ratio is increased in the baseline routing protocol.
Finally, the results in Fig. 13(c) depict that an excellent and a good fidelity of the reconstructed video when ARTVP and
RTVP are used because PSNR is between 30 and 35.2. However, RTMLD experiences a poor QoS performance in term of PSNR
which affects the fidelity of the reconstructed video stream.
Moreover, Fig. 13(c) shows that the location based routing protocols generate annoying and bad fidelity of the
reconstructed video because PSNR is very low which varies between 10 and 19.5 dB. This is primarily due to the losing
of multimedia data packets when location based routing protocols are used which affects the frame reconstruction, hence,
uncomfortable watching real-time video. ARTVP and RTVP assist to prolong the MWSN lifetime and preserve the frame
delivery ratio at high level which will cause high fidelity of the reconstructed video.

6. Conclusion and future works

This research paper introduces an adaptive traffic shaping data rate with real-time video streaming routing protocol
(ARTVP) over next-generation of WMSN. ARTVP achieves optimal complexity of multimedia coding and utilizes the
multipath forwarding with dynamic cost calculation for selecting next hop. The proposed mechanism ensures high delivery
ratio, less end-to-end delay, optimal complexity, smooth routing reliability and high fidelity PSNR criteria of the multimedia
streaming. The finding concludes that the adaptive traffic shaping with dynamic multipath selection ensures high fidelity
of the reconstructed video and prolongs the WMSN lifetime. The experimental results of this research provide an evidence
to verify that the proposed mechanism assurances high QoS performance. The future works of this research will focus on
integrating ARTVP into the congestion control mechanism at transport layer such as Datagram Congestion Control Protocol
(DCCP) and using H.265 to obtain a better solution for streaming VBR of multimedia data over WMSN.
 A.A. Ahmed / Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 (2017) 495511 511

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, under Grant
No. (830-607-D1435). The authors, therefore, gratefully acknowledge the DSR technical and financial support.

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