Seamless Mobility of Multi-user Sessions over Heterogeneous Networks
Authors
Abstract
Wireless networking represents the future in terms of connectivity and ubiquitous access. The current wireless landscape is characterized by distinct radio access technologies developed to fulfill the requirements and expectations of users. From the traditional cellular networks (e.g. GSM, EDGE, GPRS, UMTS) to the local area networks (e.g. IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n) and wide area networks (e.g. IEEE 802.16, DVB-T/H, DAB), wireless technologies represent a rapidly area of growth and importance. These progresses create a demand for mobility management techniques able to provide a mobile communication without perceived quality degradation.The Internet architecture needs also to support applications aimed to several simultaneous receivers such as Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), voice and video conferencing, push media (e.g. news headlines, weather updates), file distribution and monitoring (e.g. sensors, stock). These multi-user sessions need to be distributed efficiently and independently of the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, transport and access technologies.
The need to control the quality level, connectivity and seamless mobility for multi-user sessions across heterogeneous wired and wireless environments motivated the development of the Quality of Service for Mobile Multi-user Multimedia Services (Q3M) architecture in which this work was undertaken. As a brief overview, the Q3M architecture controls the flow of multi-user sessions across heterogeneous networks through the use of an edge networking approach, in which the functionality of each network is controlled by a group of organized edge devices.
The objective of this doctorate is to design and evaluate mechanisms capable to assure the seamless mobility of sources and receivers of multi-user sessions. In other words, the goal is to guarantee the uninterrupted reception of a multi-user session during the movement of a mobile node. This will increase the client satisfaction, and consequently, the operator revenues.
To validate the soundness of the proposals, they were evaluated using the discrete event simulator NS2 and the open source Evalvid framework. Namely, the enhanced packet losses avoidance and its influence in the perceived quality of the sessions were investigated. The obtained results confirm the advantages of the proposed approaches in supporting the seamless mobility of users.