Handover Algorithm for Video Communications by Sharing Communication Quality Information of Access Points between Terminals.

In recent years, the demand for multimedia services that can handle voice and/or videos on mobile terminals has increased. Many handover algorithms have been proposed for switching the connection between different networks while maintaining QoE (Quality of Experience), which is a metric that is a measure of users’ satisfaction when using a certain service or application. The QoE-driven VHO algorithm is one of such algorithms using a prediction model of QoE for movies streamed over wireless networks. Since the algorithm may not provide an acceptable level of quality when network performance temporarily decreases, the authors also proposed an algorithm (hereinafter referred to as the “previous algorithm”) to improve the problem. However, since these algorithms cannot predict QoE of candidate networks before switching, the connection may be switched to a network with much lower QoE. In order to solve the problem, this paper proposes a new handover algorithm for video communications by sharing communication quality information of access points between terminals. In this algorithm, each mobile terminal creates a list specifying the communication quality of the connected access point and shares it with other terminals. The simulation results show that terminals in the proposed method can connect to the access points with better QoE for longer durations than the QoE-driven VHO algorithm and the previous algorithm.