Novel framework for proactive handover with seamless multimedia over WLANs

Supporting multimedia applications over 802.11 wireless LANs requires low latency and seamless handover between multiple access points. However, the existing handover process in 802.11 products suffers from very high delay and frequent service disruption, which are not acceptable for streaming multimedia applications. In order to reduce this high delay and service disruption, the authors have designed and implemented a new proactive handover strategy over 802.11. The strategy intelligently issues proactive scan and handover triggers to reduce the effective channel scanning delay. Subsequently, it reserves resources in advance, to reduce the handoff reconnection delay and provide necessary QoS guarantee. Using actual implementation and simulation study, the authors demonstrate that their proposed strategy is capable of achieving magnitudes of latency, jitter and throughput improvements during the 802.11 handover operations, thereby providing seamless multimedia transmission.