Mobility-Aware Video Streaming in MIMO-Capable Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Abstract

Multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) is a well-known technique for the exploitation of the spatial multiplexing (MUX) and spatial diversity (DIV) gains that improve transmission quality and reliability. In this paper, we propose a quality-adaptive scheme for handover and forwarding that supports mobile-video-streaming services in MIMO-capable, heterogeneous wireless-access networks such as those for Wi-Fi and LTE. Unlike previous handover schemes, we propose an appropriate metric for the selection of the wireless technology and the MIMO mode, whereby a new address availability and the wireless-channel quality, both of which are in a new wireless-access network so that the handover and video-playing delays are reduced, are considered. While an MN maintains its original care-of address (oCoA), the video packets destined for the MN are forwarded with the MIMO technique (MUX mode or DIV mode) on top of a specific wireless technology from the previous Access Router (pAR) to the new Access Router (nAR) until they finally reach the MN; however, to guarantee a high video-streaming quality and to limit the video-packet-forwarding hops between the pAR and the nAR, the MN creates a new CoA (nCOA) within the delay threshold of the QoS/quality of experience (QoE) satisfaction result, and then, as much as possible, the video packet is forwarded with the MUX. Through extensive simulations, we show that the proposed scheme is a significant improvement upon the other schemes.