A framework for mobility prediction and high bandwidth utilization to support mobile multimedia streaming

Abstract

With the increasing number of mobile users on one hand, and the scarce resources in wireless networks on the other hand, there is need for efficient bandwidth utilization in order to avoid/reduce calls blocking/dropping. In this paper, we propose a framework that aims at ensuring QoS in terms of bandwidth reservation along a user's path (i.e., from his source location to his destination). For this objective, knowledge of user's path from source to destination and his handoff times is required. Therefore, we exploit user mobility prediction schemes [1, 2] to predict users' mobility and handoff time windows estimation schemes [3] to predict bandwidth availability for efficient call admission; however, these schemes [1-3] allow for processing individual user requests. Thus, to make the proposed framework scalable (with the number of users), we also propose a group-based path prediction model that estimates path to destination for a group of users (not only for a single user). The simulation results show that the proposed framework is effective in reducing the dropping rate of handoff calls and new call blocking rate, and in improving bandwidth utilization.