A Context-Aware Streaming Agent Method for Optimal Seamless Service in a Vertical Handover Environment

We propose a novel context-aware streaming agent to achieve optimal high quality seamless streaming service in heterogeneous wireless networks and mobile terminals and to utilize high WLAN bandwidth in mobile phones. The major difference between our proposed method and existing methods is the use of mobile terminal oriented context-aware streaming adaptation. We outline a streaming network architecture among the streaming server, gateway, and mobile terminal, an extended RTSP protocol and a streaming quality level selection algorithm in the mobile terminal. We consider vertical handover between HSDPA and 802.11g/n and take advantage of H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC). Our new method makes optimal seamless streaming service possible for various network situations, terminal capabilities, and user preferences. Streaming agents first determine adequate quality level based on user preference, terminal constraints, dynamic network conditions and battery status. Then a gateway requests an adequate SVC layer to be sent to the server based on the agent's requested quality level. Agent and gateway communicate using an extended RTSP protocol which enables content quality modification during streaming. Our novel streaming agent method improves user satisfaction. By selecting an "optimal network condition" policy, we can improve content and maximize the potential of the 3.28 SVC layer. By minimizing power consumption, we can reduce power consumption by 13% by processing a different SVC layer.