Video performance using adaptive DRX switching for LTE-A

The DRX (Discontinuous Reception) mechanism is the currently used technique for power saving in mobile devices. This approach is also utilized for LTE-Advanced and efforts are being made in order to enhance the performance of this mechanism. The currently used algorithm saves power in trade-off with delays. Using the same DRX configurations all the time with various traffic characteristics is not efficient when the aim is to achieve better performance. Lower delays and lower power consumption levels could be realized by implementing an efficient adaptive DRX approach. The proposed scheme for LTE-Advanced implements adaptive DRX configuration switching based on the traffic characteristics by tuning the DRX configurations to achieve the required power saving while at the same time keeping delays to a minimum and improving the mobile device's performance. Preliminary results indicate that a multi-DRX configuration is an effective way to achieve the best performance. In this contribution, the performance of the power saving mechanism for different types of video streaming such as: low resolution, high resolution and Full HD quality videos will be presented. The DRX configurations are switched based on the traffic characteristics in order to avoid limitations, such as overhead and the trade-off between delays and power saving, while taking into account the performance of other running processes such as HARQ, scheduling and handovers.