Handover Optimization for Video Applications in WiMAX

Video broadcast applications have received significant interests from the mobile WiMAX standard in terms of capabilities and means of delivery multimedia services, by providing high bandwidth over long-range transmission. However, one of the main problems of IEEE 802.16 is that it covers multi BS with too many profiled layers, which can lead to potential interoperability problems. The multi BS mode requires multiple BSs to be scanned synchronously before initiating the transmission of broadcast data. In this paper, we first identify the key issues for video application over WiMAX. Then we present a MAC layer solution to guarantee the demanded bandwidth and supporting a higher possible throughput between two WiMAX end points during the handover. Moreover, we propose a PHY and MAC layers scheme to maintain the required communication channel quality for video streams during handover. Results show that our proposed schemes can significantly improve the network throughput up to 64%, reducing the data dropped to 60% while satisfying video quality requirements.