Transparent Handover Using WiFi Network Prediction for Mobile Video Streaming

Loosely controlled Wi-Fi networks, such as deployed at festivals and events, typically do not provide a full coverage of the terrain. As a result, the user experience of a mobile user watching a video stream is rather erratic, because of frequent disconnections and re-connections. However, these periods of disconnections are generally rather short (10 - 50 seconds for a coverage area of around 70%). To ensure a continuous experience one needs to graciously handle these “disconnection gaps” until a client connects to the subsequent access point. In this paper we will introduce a disconnection prediction (DP) mechanism and pre-fetcher (PF) to successfully initiate a transparent handover ensuring a continuous user experience for video streaming.