Performance analysis of header compression schemes in heterogeneous wireless multi-hop networks

Wireless multi-hop networks are becoming more popular and the demand for multimedia services in these networks rises with the number of their implementations. Header compression schemes that compress the IP/UDP/RTP headers to save bandwidth for multimedia streams were typically evaluated only for individual links, not taking into account the savings that can be achieved using header compression over a complete path. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of three categories of header compression schemes: (i) delta coding, (ii) framed delta coding, and (iii) framed referential coding. We evaluate the performance for these schemes on reliable and unreliable links. We then extend our evaluations to several links constituting a path. As nodes in multi-hop ad-hoc and mesh networks may differ with respect to their capabilities, we assume in our evaluation that (forwarding) nodes may not be able or choose not to perform header compression. We find that the framed referential header compression scheme is the most suitable scheme in case that no or long-delay feedback channels exist. We additionally compare the packet drop savings due to header compression and the combined savings of compression and drops. We again find that the framed referential coding scheme exhibits good performance that can lead to significant header compression and packet drop savings for reasonable bit error rates.