A Novel Vertical Handover Mechanism for Media Streaming in Heterogeneous Wireless Architectures
László Bokor, László Lois, Csaba A. Szabó, Sándor Szabó
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Telecommunications
{bokorl, lois, szabo, szabos}@hit.bme.hu
Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Telecommunications
{bokorl, lois, szabo, szabos}@hit.bme.hu
The paper presents a novel vertical handover mechanism which aims at assuring streaming media services in a heterogeneous network environment where the subscribers are roaming among different wired/wireless access systems including ADSL, WiFi, 2.5G and 3G cellular and WiMAX. The handover scheme provides seamless connectivity during roaming, with adapting the quality of the delivered media stream to the changes of the network characteristics and to the capabilities of a wide variety of devices. The paper presents general design considerations, focuses on introducing the operational behaviour of the novel vertical handover method, its implementation and evaluation in a heterogeneous access network testbed, as well as discusses some aspects of gaining higher level features based on our proposal.