Live multicast video streaming from drones: an experimental study

We present and evaluate a multicast framework for point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-point-to-multipoint video streaming that is applicable if both source and receiver nodes are mobile. Receiver nodes can join a multicast group by selecting a particular video stream and are dynamically elected as designated nodes based on their signal quality to provide feedback about packet reception. We evaluate the proposed application-layer rate-adaptive multicast video streaming over an aerial ad-hoc network that uses IEEE 802.11, a desirable protocol that, however, does not support a reliable multicast mechanism due to its inability to provide feedback from the receivers. Our rate-adaptive approach outperforms legacy multicast in terms of goodput, delay, and packet loss. Moreover, we obtain a gain in video quality (PSNR) of 30% for point-to-multipoint and of 20% for multipoint-to-point-to-multipoint streaming.