Quality of Service Issues in Mobile Multimedia Transmission

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is on the quality of service (QoS) aspects involved in transmitting multimedia information via mobile systems. Multimedia content and applications require sophisticated QoS protocols. These protocols need to manage throughput, delay, delay variance, error rate, and cost. How errors are handled in a multimedia session can have significant impact on the delay and delay variance. Coding and compression techniques also influence how the final presentation is transformed by the impediments encountered on a mobile network. Providing the user with the ability to negotiate between cost, quality, and temporal aspects is important, as this allows the user to strike a balance between these factors. In moving from 2G to 3G, and, over the next decade to 4G mobile networks, the ability to transmit multimedia information is going to improve constantly. Nonetheless, providers must develop viable economic models and user interfaces for providing differentiated QoS to the users.