A novel server selection approach for mobile cloud streaming service

•We propose a mobility-aware framework for mobile cloud streaming services.•We present Client-driven QoS-oriented Server Selection Scheme (CQS3) to redirects user requests to the “best” server.•We propose dynamic server selection algorithms for mobile cloud streaming systems to support user mobility.•We design our simulation experiment carefully by applying GT-ITM.•The experimental results validate that our strategy adapts well to user mobility with comparable delay performance.

Mobile cloud streaming has become very popular recently. However, the centralized datacenter structure may lead to high service delay, especially for real time and high bandwidth streaming services. Deploying cloud edge servers may improve the quality of mobile streaming services in theory, but it cannot well adapt to the user mobility. To deal with this problem, this paper puts forward our MACSS, a mobility-aware framework for mobile cloud streaming services, which provides dynamic and optimized server selection functions to support user mobility comprehensively. Then we further propose CQS3, a novel quality-aware scheme that frequently redirects user requests to the “best” server according to comprehensive service quality grade. Simulation results show that CQS3 scales well and guarantees comparable delay performance. In addition, CQS3 can significantly improve PSNR comparing with CSS and is well adapted to user mobility and channel variation.