A software-defined networking approach for handover management with real-time video in WLANs

To achieve high performance and reliability in video streaming over wireless local area networks (WLANs), one must jointly consider both optimized association to access points (APs) and handover management based on dynamic scanning of alternate APs. In this article, we propose a new architecture within the software-defined networking (SDN) framework, which allows stations to be connected to several APs simultaneously and to switch fast between them. We evaluate our system in a real-time testbed and demonstrate that our SDN-based handover mechanism significantly reduces the number and duration of video freeze events and allows for smaller playout buffers.