Clustered architecture for adaptive multimedia streaming in WiMAX-based cellular networks

In the recent years, there has been an increasing demand for high quality multimedia services over wireless networks. Triple play services (voice, data and video) require data-rates of the order of several megabits per second (Mbps). However, the large transmission distance and the limited battery power of the hand-held wireless device serves as a major bottleneck. There has been no successful mechanism developed till date that would provide live video streaming over wireless networks. In this paper, a novel cluster-based double dumbbell topology is proposed for adaptive multimedia streaming in WiMAX-based multihop cellular networks. The performance of the network is evaluated for a two-hop model and compared with a traditional single-hop cellular design. Extensive simulations have been carried out in terms of different kinds of network traffic and over different protocols. It is observed that the performance of the proposed cluster-based design for WiMAX networks is significantly superior to the one-hop design, not only in terms of the perceived quality, but also in terms of the loss rate and the average bit rate.