Provision of quality of service in wireless fourth generation networks

A key word describing next generation wireless networks is ‘seamless’. Wireless fourth generation (4G) networks represent a set of new technologies that will enable seamless integration of various wireless access systems, while targeting to support various sophisticated and quality of service constraining applications, such as high‐speed data services and multimedia services. This paper first proposes an architecture for 4G networks. The most significant feature of this architecture is its flexibility, openness and ability to enable seamless handoff in a single logical overlay network composed of many heterogeneous access networks. A medium access control (MAC) protocol for basic access networks is then introduced. A generic scheduling scheme, named CS‐EDF (channel state‐earliest deadline first) and the details of an efficient handoff management method are also briefly introduced. The bandwidth utilization, handoff resources reservation, and scheduling scheme performances of the proposed schemes are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seamless SIP-based mobility for multimedia applications

Application-level protocol abstraction is required to support seamless mobility in next-generation heterogeneous wireless networks. Session initiation protocol (SIP) provides the required abstraction for mobility support for multimedia applications in such networks. However, the handoff procedure with SIP suffers from undesirable delay and hence packet loss in some cases, which is detrimental to applications like voice over IP (VoIP) or streaming video that demand stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements. In this article we present a SIP-based architecture that supports soft handoff for IP-centric wireless networks. Soft handoff ensures that there is no packet loss and that the end-to-end delay jitter is kept under control.     

A Context-Aware Network Equipment for Dynamic Adaptation of Multimedia Services in Wireless Networks

B3G (Beyond 3rd Generation) networks is the next step in the wireless world. It will enable the delivery of services to end-users, on different underlying wireless access networks and customised to users’ context. Furthermore, seamless mobility between networks and switch of devices will be handled in a transparent way. In this paper, a Context-Aware Network Equipment (CANE) is introduced, that is able to dynamically adapt multimedia services according to the users’ context. The term context includes the users’ device, the users’ preferences, the network conditions as well as the service provider adaptation policies. As a proof of concept, an implementation of a CANE is given for a 802.11 network use-case. An evaluation of the prototype as well as simulations of the proposed solution, both for an audio streaming service and a video streaming service, are presented. The results show that adapting multimedia services in case of network overload can enable to maintain an acceptable quality of service delivered to end-users and even to allow more users to enjoy the services, which will not be possible without the CANE.     

Mobility support in wireless Internet

The tremendous advancement and popularity of wireless access technologies necessitates the convergence of multimedia (audio, video, and text) services on a unified global (seamless) network infrastructure. Circuit-switched proprietary telecommunication networks are evolving toward more cost-effective and uniform packet-switched networks such as those based on IP. However, one of the key challenges for the deployment of such wireless Internet infrastructure is to efficiently manage user mobility. To provide seamless services to mobile users, several protocols have been proposed over the years targeting different layers in the network protocol stack. In this article we present a cross-layer perspective on the mobility protocols by identifying the key features of their design principles and performance issues. An analysis of the signaling overhead and handoff delay for some representative protocols in each layer is also presented. Our conclusion is that although the application layer protocol is worse than the protocols operating in the lower layers, in terms of handoff delay and signaling overhead, it is better suited as a potential mobility solution for the next-generation heterogeneous networks, if we consider such factors as protocol stack modification, infrastructure change, and inherent operational complexity.     

Connection architecture and protocols to support efficient handoffs over an ATM/B-ISDN personal communications network

The next generation personal communication network will likely internetwork wireless networks via the ATM/B-ISDN to enable ubiquitous broadband personal communication services. Support of user terminal mobility, particularly the capability for fast and seamless handoffs, over the ATM/B-ISDN is an expected requirement that is not currently met. We propose extensions to the ATM/B-ISDN user transport and signaling network architectures and signaling protocols to meet these requirements. The new architecture employs the Mobile Virtual Circuit (MVC), a dynamic connection tree in which routes are predetermined but not set up for potential handoff connections. During a handoff, associated signaling using source-routing with a new robust adaptation feature is employed for fast resource allocation to establish the handoff connection by distributed control. We also address the new problem of packet ordering synchronization to enable a seamless handoff. The connection tree reconfigures after each handoff to enable continuous support of successive handoffs. The proposed scheme optimizes handoff delay over the ATM/B-ISDN while minimizing unnecessary resource allocation, chances of handoff failure, and call processing load in the intelligent network, and the extensions are backward compatible to current ATM/B-ISDN standards and implementations.This paper was presented in part in PIMRC'95 in Toronto, and Globecom'95 in Singapore. This work was supported by the Canadian Institute of Telecommunications Research (CITR), funded under the Canadian Federal Government's Networks of Centres of Excellence Program.     

A QoE handover architecture for converged heterogeneous wireless networks

The convergence of real-time multimedia applications, the increasing coverage of heterogeneous wireless networks and the ever-growing popularity of mobile devices are leading to an era of mobile human-centric multimedia services. In this scenario, heterogeneous communications will co-exist and ensure that the end-user is always best connected. The rigorous networking demands of wireless multimedia systems, beyond quality-oriented control strategies, are necessary to guarantee the best user experience over time. Therefore, the Quality of Experience (QoE) support, especially for 2D or 3D videos in multi-operator environments, remains a significant challenge and is crucial for the success of multimedia systems. This paper proposes a QoE Handover Architecture for Converged Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, called QoEHand. QoEHand extends the Media Independent Handover (MIH)/IEEE 802.21 with QoE-awareness, seamless mobility and video adaptation by integrating a set of QoE-based decision-making modules into MIH, namely a video quality estimator, a dynamic class of service mapping and content adaptation schemes. The QoEHand video estimator, mapping and adaptation components operate by coordinating information about video characteristics, available wireless resources in IEEE 802.11e and IEEE 802.16e service classes, and QoE-aware human experience. The video quality estimator works without the need for any decoding, which saves time and minimises processing overheads. Simulations were carried out to show the benefits of QoEHand and its impact on user perception by using objective and subjective QoE metrics.     

Protected seamless content delivery in P2P wireless and wired networks - seamless content delivery in the future mobile internet

Delivering protected seamless content services over heterogeneous networks should be solidly sustained on top of architectures that can offer support for guaranteed quality delivery according to network or consumer requirements. The delivery of personalized, scalable, seamless, and trusted multimedia content delivery, while adequately protecting the content, is a key factor to provide seamless content services to the final user and provide a framework for user participation. This article describes novel forms of delivering seamless content services over P2P networks using multilayered/multiviewed content coding techniques, such as SVC/MVC, multisource/ multinetwork streaming, and adaptation, with special focus on enabling content protection and lightweight asset management for a secure and privacy keeping content delivery. The implementation has been validated in the framework of the European Project SEA (IST-214063).     

Predictive mobile-oriented channel reservation schemes in wireless cellular networks

Provision of seamless service to multimedia applications in cellular wireless networks largely depends on the way calls are handled during handoff. Hence, sufficient resources must be provided for handoff (HO) connections when a mobile station (MS) moves from one cell to another. Effective allocation of resources can be achieved when the exact future trajectory of MSs is known in advance. However, such a scenario is unrealistic. The next best possibility is to employ user mobility prediction to determine the cell(s) a MS will likely visit in the near future. In this paper, we present an extensive survey and classification of channel (bandwidth) reservation schemes which employ user mobility prediction in the resource reservation process. We also present a survey and classification of call admission control (CAC) schemes, including discussion of prioritized and non-prioritized handoff schemes, which can be useful for researches both in academia and industry.     

An efficient vertical handoff scheme for microcellular and macrocellular interworking

The next generation wireless network environments increasingly become integrated to support anywhere, anytime connectivity for various applications like multimedia, full‐motion video and high data rates with appropriate quality of service (QoS). With these emerging needs, interworking of microcellular and macrocellular networks has been accompanied by service providers. However, these networks have different technologies, which make efficient vertical handoff a challenging issue. In this study, an efficient vertical handoff scheme (EVHS) for interworking between microcellular and macrocellular networks is proposed and analyzed. The handoff decision criteria of the proposed scheme include crucial features like user mobility, network conditions, pricing issues, and user preferences in addition to the received signal strength (RSS). EVHS ensures the selection of the most appropriate network in terms of cost and acceptable QoS according to users' preferences. The results show that EVHS scheme outperforms other proposed schemes in the literature in terms of incompletion probabilities, grade of service (GoS) and cost without causing degradation in system utilization. Besides, although EVHS scheme is mainly intended for user satisfaction, the results show that it does not cause a significant degradation in the revenue of the service provider. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NGN中的移动多媒体业务平台

IP多媒体子系统作为下一代网络的重要平台实现了固定网络与移动网络的无缝业务传递,丰富了移动多媒体的各种增值业务.IP多媒体子系统具有控制功能与承载能力分离、呼叫与会晤分离、应用与服务分离、业务与网络分离、移动网与互联网业务融合的主要特征,既适用于基于IP的移动多媒体业务,也适用于传统语音、数据和视频业务,是未来移动多媒体业务的发展方向.     

DVB-H Systems: Quality-Based Active Handoff Assisted by UMTS Return Channels

Digital Video Broadcasting for Handheld terminals (DVB-H) is a new standard developed by DVB Project consortium to enable the delivery of broadcast transmissions to mobile terminals (such as, cellular telephone, PDA, pocket PC, etc.). Being the DVB-H network characterized by a cellular structure, a key issue to avoid the service interruption in these systems is the design of effective handoff procedures. This paper introduces a novel seamless handoff approach for DVB-H networks, which is designed to reduce the user terminal power consumption and to make the handoff algorithm be driven by the quality of the user received signal. This implies the adoption of a method based on the constant monitoring of the Modulation Error Rate (MER), instead of standard RSSI-based procedures. Additional advantages in terms of power saving derive from the use of an Active Handoff procedure that exploits the UMTS return channel as an interaction channel. The proposed scheme has been successfully tested and obtained results make us confident that this can be an interesting research direction to investigate in the view of effective DVB-H handoff protocol design.     

IEEE 802.21: Media independent handover: Features, applicability, and realization

Providing users of multi-interface devices the ability to roam between different access networks is becoming a key requirement for service providers. The availability of multiple mobile broadband access technologies, together with the increasing use of real-time multimedia applications, is creating strong demand for handover solutions that can seamlessly and securely transition user sessions across different access technologies. A key challenge to meeting this growing demand is to ensure handover performance, measured in terms of latency and loss. In addition, handover solutions must allow service providers, application providers, and other entities to implement handover policies based on a variety of operational and business requirements. Therefore, standards are required that can facilitate seamless handover between such heterogeneous access networks and that can work with multiple mobility management mechanisms. The IEEE 802.21 standard addresses this problem space by providing a media-independent framework and associated services to enable seamless handover between heterogeneous access technologies. In this article, we discuss how the IEEE 802.21 standard framework and services are addressing the challenges of seamless mobility for multi-interface devices. In addition, we describe and discuss design considerations for a proof-of-concept IEEE 802.21 implementation and share practical insights into how this standard can optimize handover performance.     

Architecture,mobility management,and quality of service for integrated 3G and WLAN networks

Integration of 3G and wireless LAN (WLAN) becomes a trend in current and future wireless networks, and brings many benefits to both end users and service providers. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on integration of 3G and WLAN. We discuss issues such as underline network architectures, integrated architectures, mobility management, and quality of service (QoS). We particularly study handoff QoS mapping and guarantee between 3G and WLAN, as well as how seamless voice/multimedia/data handoff becomes possible. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A framework for seamless roaming across cellular and wireless local area networks

In the future, wireless and mobile users will have increased demands for seamless roaming across different types of wireless networks, quality of service guarantees, and support for a variety of services. This awareness has led to research activities directed toward intersystem and global roaming, and can be noticed in numerous products like multimode handsets, interworking gateways, and ongoing standards and research work on intersystem roaming. The authors of this article proposed a global mobility management framework to support seamless roaming across heterogeneous wireless networks. In this article we provide details on the use of the framework to support roaming across cellular and wireless local area networks. Highlights of the framework include a robust architecture for mobility management for varying user mobility spans, provisioning for QoS mapping, intersystem message translation, and mechanisms in the WLAN to support user-subscribed services. Performance aspects related to handoff delays, data redirection, and processing overheads are presented and discussed. Performance comparison of intersystem roaming between cellular and WLAN with and without the framework is presented.     

A survey of quality of service in IEEE 802.11 networks

Developed as a simple and cost-effective wireless technology for best effort services, IEEE 802.11 has gained popularity at an unprecedented rate. However, due to the lack of built-in quality of service support, IEEE 802.11 experiences serious challenges in meeting the demands of multimedia services and applications. This article surveys 802.11 QoS schemes, including service differentiation in the MAC layer, admission control and bandwidth reservation in MAC and higher layers, and link adaptation in the physical layer, designed to meet these challenges by providing the necessary enhancements for the required QoS. Furthermore, the article addresses issues that arise when end-to-end QoS has to be guaranteed in today's pervasive heterogeneous wired-cum-wireless networks. Among these challenges, protocol interoperability, multihop scheduling, full mobility support, and seamless vertical handoff among multiple mobile/wireless interfaces are specifically addressed.     

H.264/SVC vs. H.264/AVC video quality comparison under QoE-driven seamless handoff

This paper studies the impact of mobility management and seamless handover mechanisms on the perceived quality of video streaming applications. A seamless handoff scheme is proposed that incorporates IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover framework and a QoE-driven rate adaptation scheme, for both scalable and single layer coding. Quality of Experience (QoE) has been considered as an important parameter for network selection. The proposed scheme has been implemented and evaluated in a real test-bed network. Objective and subjective quality evaluation measurements for both H.264/AVC and H.264/SVC have been carried out. Through experimentation, QoE driven mobility of video streaming can be better maintained with H.264/SVC under the combined seamless handoff and rate adaptation functionality.     

Vertical handoffs in fourth-generation multinetwork environments

Revolutionary drivers for 4G include a push toward universal wireless access and ubiquitous computing through seamless personal and terminal mobility. One of the major challenges for seamless mobility is the criterion of a vertical handoff protocol: a handoff protocol for users that move between different types of networks. Traditional operations for handoff detection policies, decision metrics, and radio link transfer are not able to adapt to dynamic handoff criteria or react to user inputs and changing network availabilities. Nor are they able to deliver context-aware services or ensure network interoperability. Thus, new techniques are needed to manage user mobility between different types of networks. This article presents a tutorial on the design and performance issues for vertical hand-off in an envisioned multinetwork fourth-generation environment. Various network architectures and technologies for 3G and beyond are described, including wireless LANs, cellular, satellite, and Mobile IP. Then the problem of vertical handoff is defined in the context of such a diverse network environment. Finally, research efforts to resolve the open problems are explored, including new techniques for dynamic handoff decision and detection algorithms and context-aware radio link transfer.     

Design of an ATM switch for handoff support

In a wireless ATM system, a network must provide seamless services to mobile users. To support this, mobility function should be added to existing ATM networks. Through a handoff operation, a mobile user can receive a service from the network without disconnecting the communication. A handoff results in connection path rerouting during an active connection. To avoid cell loss during a handoff, cell buffering and rerouting are required in the network. A handoff switch is a connection breakdown point on an original connection path in the network from which a new connection sub‐path is established. It performs cell buffering and rerouting during a handoff. Cell buffering and rerouting can introduce a cell out‐of‐sequence problem. In this paper we propose a handoff switch architecture with a shared memory. The architecture performs cell buffering and rerouting efficiently by managing logical queues of virtual connections in the shared memory and sorting head‐of‐line cells for transmission, thus achieving in‐sequence cell delivery during a handoff. We also present simulation results to understand the impacts of handoffs on switch performance. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

SIP-based vertical handoff between WWANs and WLANs

Future-generation wireless networks have been envisioned as the integration of various wireless access networks, including both wireless wide area networks and wireless local area networks. In such a heterogeneous network environment, seamless mobility support is the basis of providing uninterrupted wireless services to mobile users roaming between various wireless access networks. Because of transparency to lower-layer characteristics, ease of deployment, and greater scalability, the application-layer-based session initiation protocol has been considered the right candidate for handling mobility in heterogeneous wireless networks. However, SIP entails application-layer transport and processing of messages, which may introduce considerable delay. As a case study of the performance of mobility management protocols in the heterogeneous wireless networks, we analyze the delay associated with vertical handoff using SIP in the WLAN-UMTS internetwork. Analytical results show that WLAN-to-UMTS handoff incurs unacceptable delay for supporting real-time multimedia services, and is mainly due to transmission of SIP signaling messages over erroneous and bandwidth-limited wireless links. On the other hand, UMTS-to-WLAN handoff experiences much less delay, mainly contributed by the processing delay of signaling messages at the WLAN gateways and servers. While the former case requires the deployment of soft handoff techniques to reduce the delay, faster servers and more efficient host configuration mechanisms can do the job in the latter case.     

Requirements for an IMS-based Quadruple Play Service Architecture

Quadruple play can be understood as the provisioning of high-speed voice, video (live broadcast or on demand services, such as video on demand), and data services over broadband connections with mobility support. Currently, there are several trials of the IP multimedia subsystem deployed worldwide that promise to provide telecommunication and advanced multimedia services. This article focuses mainly on the basic requirements of a cooperative service delivery platform for provisioning quadruple play services. As a result of this research, an IMS-based cooperative service delivery platform is presented. This supports various access technologies to acquire the streaming services. To validate our quadruple play architecture, we implemented a prototype based on DVB-H and UMTS as the access technologies. This prototype is part of the ongoing development of the proposed architecture