Link quality and QoE aware predictive vertical handoff mechanism for video streaming in urban VANET

Abstract

The ever-growing interest in multimedia services and the need for appropriate approaches for the delivery of video streaming in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks require the definition of favorable strategies that implies a guarantee of the perceived video quality. Considering the degradation of the perceived video quality during handover process, we suggest an intelligent handoff vehicle agent that provides a predictive handoff decision. The proposed handoff mechanism is based on a predicting method to forecast the link Quality between the RSU and the vehicle with a cross-layer QoE triggering in a downloading video streaming scenario. The Link Quality and QoE aware Predictive Vertical Handoff mechanism for Video streaming (LQPVH) is a cross-layer method proactively reducing the handover disruption time. The selection of the best network to handover to is based on a Handoff Weight function exploiting an elimination factor with RSSI, experienced QoS and QoE parameters. The benefit of predicting the handoff point is illustrated by a set of simulations employing a video streaming traffic, showing how the quality of experience perceived by end-users can be enhanced through a prediction of handoff process. Results demonstrate that our proposal guarantees video quality improvement compared with Speed-based Vertical HandOver solution (SVHO).