Seamless Transport for Wireless IPTV Video Streaming

Prior investigation of video streaming over wireless networks has assumed a single access point and a homogeneous wireless technology. With multi-homed devices and the harmonizing influence of IEEE 802.21, it is now becoming possible to offer seamless video streaming. The paper presents a video streaming transport scheme that is more capable of exploiting the expected reduced latencies of IPTV content distribution networks. Simulations show the consistent superiority in terms of reduced packet loss and video quality of a simple NACK-based scheme over a traditional congestion controller and baseline UDP transport. Results are shown without and with vertical handover between a WiMAX base station and a WiFi access point