Transient Time Period Analysis of Smooth Handoffs in Mobile IP Networks and its Application to Media Streaming

摘要

Streaming media applications over mobile IP networks suffer from playback disruptions resulting from handoff blackout period as well as bandwidth fluctuation. To overcome buffer shortage, pre-buffering technique can be adopted where the client stores sufficient amount of stream in advance. However, under the mobile IP handoff that may take up to several seconds, it is extremely difficult to sustain seamless playback. Inaccurate and conservative choice on the required buffering size can waste limited latency budget, resulting in quality degradation. In this paper, we are extending - from smooth handoff to fast handoff of mobile IPv6 - the transient time analysis recently proposed in Ref. 1 to approximate transient time durations, STP (silent time period) and UTP (unstable time period). The approximated time periods are utilized to estimate the required buffering buffer size accurately. Network simulation result evaluated under simplified buffering strategies shows that the proposed scheme can provide appropriate guideline on the buffer parameters and thus can. improve seamless streaming.