Active Component Driven Network Handoff for Mobile Multimedia Systems

This paper presents novel solutions to some of the QoS problems associated with delay sensitive multimedia applications in next generation mobile environments. Based upon a set of requirements drawn from mobile multimedia applications, we speculate that the emerging field of active networking can help address these QoS issues. We introduce a set of active software components which, when executed on active network routers, are capable of significantly reducing network handoff times for mobile devices. This paper also documents the innovative component-based active network architecture used to support and develop the QoS enhancing components described above. Finally, we demonstrate the flexible and extensible properties of the active router design through a detailed description of the workings of the components described above.