In this paper, a proof-of-concept and a software architecture, M 4 (MultiMedia Mobility Manager), is presented. In short, M 4 is offering seamless mobility management to multimedia applications using a variety of wireless access networks. First, M 4 is built on multihomed Mobile IP building on the principle of soft handovers. Second, network selection in M 4 is based on a network layer metric combining round-trip times and jitter in round-trip times. Third, the end-user can enter its own preferences on network selection through a policy-based extension to the proposed network selection algorithm. The proposed architecture is evaluated in a live heterogeneous networking environment where handover performance is studied in detail. In addition, user-perceived quality of experience for Voice over IP using the M 4 software architecture has been studied. Last, downloads of large amount of data using a combination of high and low capacity wireless networks in M 4 were studied. Results indicate that the architecture as a whole and the proposed algorithms perform well. M 4 can thus be seen as an implementation of the "Always Best Connected" vision.
Our previous work includes a study on user-perceived quality of service for multimedia applications in wireless heterogeneous networks REF .
M 4 : multimedia mobility manager: a seamless mobility management architecture supporting multimedia applications
MUM
Computer Science