Adaptive Multipath Multimedia Streaming Architecture for Mobile Networks with Proactive Buffering Using Mobile Proxies

Abstract

Real-time multimedia transport has stringent bandwidth, delay and loss requirements. Providing support for such applications in infrastructure-based single hop wireless networks is a great challenge. Since mobile networks are characterized by host mobility, providing continuous streaming service in such an environment is an uphill task. In order to achieve continuous multimedia streaming, we propose an innovative multipath architecture for multimedia streaming. Existing multipath architectures are not efficient for mobile networks, where, in addition to normal streaming requirements we need to handle the frequently occurring hand-offs. In our architecture, multiple paths, identified using an efficient genetic algorithm, are used to provide robust streaming in case of link failures. Dynamic encoding schemes are used in the server to adapt according to network conditions based on the feedback received from the network. In addition hand-offs are predicted proactively and mobile agents containing the buffered data are migrated to the predicted base station. Altogether the architecture provides robust multimedia streaming service under varying network conditions. We have simulated the performance of our architecture using Network Simulator (NS - 2) and the results are promising.