Improving Vertical Handovers for Real-Time Video Traffic between UMTS and WiMAX Networks

Nowadays we have heterogeneous wireless environment with several wireless access technologies which can provide to the users seamless and continuous Quality of Service. For real-time applications is crucial to have satisfying QoS during vertical handovers between different wireless and mobile networks, for different velocities of the mobile users. In this paper we propose a solution for improving the QoS during vertical handovers between UMTS and WiMAX networks for real time video applications. The analyses have shown that performance parameters, such as delay and throughput, are strongly dependent upon the speed of the mobile terminals, showing higher delays and bigger throughput gap as velocity increases. Hence, we have proposed optimized solution for vertical handovers between WiMAX and UMTS networks for video traffic, which have been tested for different video traffic types. The results showed lower delays and smaller throughput gaps with implementation of the proposed optimized solution for vertical handovers.