Abstract

The need to respond to congestion and channel loss over not one but two wireless links is an impediment to video streaming between one mobile user device and another via an intervening IP network. The result can be poor wireless channel utilization and interruptions to the streaming process. This paper proposes that multi-connection streaming will avoid the need for application-specific cross-layer intervention to address this problem. In considering IEEE 802.16e (mobile WiMAX), the paper demonstrates that multi-connection streaming is certainly necessary but only sufficient if an appropriately sized Time Division Duplex frame is selected. Received video quality will also depend on correct determination of the number of connections and the compression ratio of the video itself. The quality of the received video must be traded off against the time to stream the complete video sequence, which in term is determined by the number of connections.