Buffer Control to Support a Seamless Stream Handoff in a WLAN that Employs Simulcast Streaming

This paper studies the buffer control issues that are related to supporting a seamless stream handoff in a WLAN environment that employs simulcast streaming. We analyze the impacts of the handoff disruption period and inter-AR synchronization variance. We also derive theoretical results that concern how a seamless stream handoff can be guaranteed in terms of the minimum buffer and backlog requirements. Based on the results, an MH-controlled-AR-pushed buffer control scheme is proposed and its cooperation with FMIPv6 is also discussed. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of our scheme. In general, the deployment of a few-hundred-millisecond video-clip buffer in ARs and MHs is sufficient to achieve the seamless stream handoff most of the time, subject to fairly relaxed constraints of the inter-AR synchronization variance (ranging plusmn 150 ms) and handoff disruption period (around 50 ms).