Optimal Buffering Strategy for Streaming Service in Time Varying Wireless Environment

Abstract

As 3G services begins and wireless LAN gets widespread, we expect streaming service will become one of the dominant services in wireless environment. However, streaming service in wireless environment is much difficult to support than in wired network, because available rate changes according to channel situation. Therefore, streaming service quality is not guaranteed just by using delay jitter buffering. On the other side, maximum rate buffering in each state incurs expensive price. We approach optimal buffering problem for guaranteed streaming service, using utility function [1] for cost and degradation. Finally, we get the optimal buffering value by analyzing utility function and validate the model by applying to practical system such as HDR [2].