Testbed of a Novel Media Streaming Architecture for Heterogeneous Wireless Environment

The paper presents the testbed of a novel network architecture which aims at providing streaming media services in a heterogeneous environment where the subscribers are roaming among different wired/wireless access networks including ADSL, WiFi, 2.5G and 3G cellular and WiMAX. The architecture provides seamless connectivity during roaming, with adapting the quality of the delivered media stream to the changes of the network characteristics and to the capabilities of a wide variety of devices. The paper presents general design considerations, focuses on a novel vertical handover mechanism, its implementation and evaluation in the testbed, as well as discusses media processing aspects. The different subsystems are currently being integrated into a single testbed which will provide an open environment for experimentation and will be suitable for technology transfer to network service providers and content providers.