Signal Strength-based Adaptive Multimedia Delivery Mechanism

The demand for multimedia services is increasing and users expect rich services at high quality levels, even while on the move and connected via different wireless networks. This paper proposes a novel signal strength-based adaptive multimedia delivery mechanism (SAMMy) that makes use of the IEEE 802.11k standard when dynamically adjusting multimedia delivery based on estimated signal strength and actual loss rates, in order to increase user perceived quality for video streaming applications in WLAN. Location and time dimensions are used together with the receive signal strength estimations in order to predict the QoS characteristics along the user's path. The proposed mechanism is evaluated by simulation and compared with a non-adaptive multimedia delivery mechanism and with two other adaptive schemes, in terms of loss, throughput and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). The results show that the proposed signal strength-based adaptive multimedia delivery scheme outperforms the other schemes involved making more efficient use of the wireless network resources and increasing the user perceived quality.