Streaming Multimedia via Overlay Networks Using Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer Connections

Short range ad-hoc wireless networks can be used to deliver streaming multimedia for information, entertainment and advertisement purposes. To enable short-range communication between various devices, the Wi-Fi Alliance proposed an extension to the IEEE802.11 Wi-Fi standard called Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer (P2P). It allows compliant devices to form ad-hoc communication groups without interrupting conventional access point-based Wi-Fi communication. This paper proposes to use Wi-Fi P2P connectivity to distribute streaming multimedia in ah-hoc formed user groups. The exchange of multimedia data is performed by forming an overlay network using Peer-to-Peer Streaming Peer Protocol (PPSPP). In order to make PPSPP function over Wi-Fi P2P connections, this paper proposes a number of changes to the protocol. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated using a computer networks emulator. The evaluation is done by streaming Live and Video-on-Demand multimedia among the different size user groups and observing the streaming multimedia Quality-of-Service parameters.