Seamless Multimedia Delivery Within a Heterogeneous Wireless Networks Environment: Are We There Yet?

The increasing popularity of live video streaming from mobile devices, such as Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, etc. pressurizes the network operators to increase the capacity of their networks. However, a simple increase in system capacity will not be enough without considering the provisioning of quality of experience (QoE) as the basis for network control, customer loyalty, and retention rate and thus increase in network operators revenue. As QoE is gaining strong momentum especially with increasing users' quality expectations, the focus is now on proposing innovative solutions to enable QoE when delivering video content over heterogeneous wireless networks. In this context, this paper presents an overview of multimedia delivery solutions, identifies the problems and provides a comprehensive classification of related state-of-the-art approaches following three key directions: 1) adaptation; 2) energy efficiency; and 3) multipath content delivery. Discussions, challenges, and open issues on the seamless multimedia provisioning faced by the current and next generation of wireless networks are also provided

Seamless multimedia delivery within a heterogeneous wireless networks environment: are we there yet?

The increasing popularity of live video streaming from mobile devices such as Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, etc. pressurises the network operators to increase the capacity of their networks. However, a simple increase in system capacity will not be enough without considering the provisioning of Quality of Experience (QoE) as the basis for network control, customer loyalty and retention rate and thus increase in network operators revenue. As QoE is gaining strong momentum especially with increasing users’ quality expectations, the focus is now on proposing innovative solutions to enable QoE when delivering video content over heterogeneous wireless networks. In this context, this paper presents an overview of multimedia delivery solutions, identifies the problems and provides a comprehensive classification of related state-of-the-art approaches following three key directions: adaptation, energy efficiency and multipath content delivery. Discussions, challenges and open issues on the seamless multimedia provisioning faced by the current and next generation of wireless networks are also provided

Data Interleaving for Congestion Reduction in Mobile Traffic Transmission

In mobile traffic transmission networks, the limited allotted spectrum-involving voice communication and data communication-is faced with the problem of limited bandwidth and consequent traffic congestion. The problem leads to poor communication services like incomplete calls, call drops, slower Internet speed, higher cost of internet service, and other undesirable effects by the service providers. The bandwidth saturation and congestion conundrum still remains critical research area, especially with emerging multitude of edge and intermediate Internet devices. Due to introduction of fog computing such devices become active participants of mobile traffic transmission. In this paper, we consider the Data Interleaving Technique in Mobile Communication (DITMC) and introduce the DITMC-based methodology for reducing the data traffic congestion and bandwidth saturation in GSM networks. The methodology is supported with an Erlang formula model, and our simulation experiments indicate the efficiency. We show that the use of methodology can be extended to other Internet problems like multi-path routing of data streams, active subscription control in smart spaces, and possibility to delegate supplementary processing to edge devices

Scalable and rate adaptive wireless multimedia multicast

The methods that are described in this work enable highly efficient audio-visual streaming over wireless digital communication systems to an arbitrary number of receivers. In the focus of this thesis is thus point-to-multipoint transmission at constrained end-to-end delay. A fundamental difference as compared to point-to-point connections between exactly two communicating sending and receiving stations is in conveying information about successful or unsuccessful packet reception at the receiver side. The information to be transmitted is available at the sender, whereas the information about successful reception is only available to the receiver. Therefore, feedback about reception from the receiver to the sender is necessary. This information may be used for simple packet repetition in case of error, or adaptation of the bit rate of transmission to the momentary bit rate capacity of the channel, or both. This work focuses on the single transmission (including retransmissions) of data from one source to multiple destinations at the same time. A comparison with multi-receiver sequentially redundant transmission systems (simulcast MIMO) is made. With respect to feedback, this work considers time division multiple access systems, in which a single channel is used for data transmission and feedback. Therefore, the amount of time that can be spent for transmitting feedback is limited. An increase in time used for feedback transmissions from potentially many receivers results in a decrease in residual time which is usable for data transmission. This has direct impact on data throughput and hence, the quality of service. In the literature, an approach to reduce feedback overhead which is based on simultaneous feedback exists. In the scope of this work, simultaneous feedback implies equal carrier frequency, bandwidth and signal shape, in this case orthogonal frequency-division multiplex signals, during the event of the herein termed feedback aggregation in time. For this scheme, a constant amount of time is spent for feedback, independent of the number of receivers giving feedback about reception. Therefore, also data throughput remains independent of the number of receivers. This property of audio-visual digital transmission is taken for granted for statically configured, single purpose systems, such as terrestrial television. In the scope of this work are, however, multi-user and multi-purpose digital communication networks. Wireless LANs are a well-known example and are covered in detail herein. In suchlike systems, it is of great importance to remain independent of the number of receivers, as otherwise the service of ubiquitous digital connectivity is at the risk of being degraded. In this regard, the thesis at hand elaborates at what bit rates audio-visual transmission to multiple receivers may take place in conjunction with feedback aggregation. It is shown that the scheme achieves a multi-user throughput gain when used in conjunction with adaptivity of the bit rate to the channel. An assumption is the use of an ideal overlay packet erasure correcting code in this case. Furthermore, for delay constrained transmission, such as in so-called live television, throughput bit rates are examined. Applications have to be tolerant to a certain level of residual error in case of delay constrained transmission. Improvement of the rate adaptation algorithm is shown to increase throughput while residual error rates are decreased. Finally, with a consumer hardware prototype for digital live-TV re-distribution in the local wireless network, most of the mechanisms as described herein can be demonstrated.Die in vorliegender Arbeit aufgezeigten Methoden der paketbasierten drahtlosen digitalen Kommunikation ermöglichen es, Fernsehinhalte, aber auch audio-visuelle Datenströme im Allgemeinen, bei hoher Effizienz an beliebig große Gruppen von Empfängern zu verteilen. Im Fokus dieser Arbeit steht damit die Punkt- zu Mehrpunktübertragung bei begrenzter Ende-zu-Ende Verzögerung. Ein grundlegender Unterschied zur Punkt-zu-Punkt Verbindung zwischen genau zwei miteinander kommunizierenden Sender- und Empfängerstationen liegt in der Übermittlung der Information über erfolgreichen oder nicht erfolgreichen Paketempfang auf Seite der Empfänger. Da die zu übertragende Information am Sender vorliegt, die Information über den Erfolg der Übertragung jedoch ausschließlich beim jeweiligen Empfänger, muss eine Erfolgsmeldung auf dem Rückweg von Empfänger zu Sender erfolgen. Diese Information wird dann zum Beispiel zur einfachen Paketwiederholung im nicht erfolgreichen Fall genutzt, oder aber um die Übertragungsrate an die Kapazität des Kanals anzupassen, oder beides. Grundsätzlich beschäftigt sich diese Arbeit mit der einmaligen, gleichzeitigen Übertragung von Information (einschließlich Wiederholungen) an mehrere Empfänger, wobei ein Vergleich zu an mehrere Empfänger sequentiell redundant übertragenden Systemen (Simulcast MIMO) angestellt wird. In dieser Arbeit ist die Betrachtung bezüglich eines Rückkanals auf Zeitduplexsysteme beschränkt. In diesen Systemen wird der Kanal für Hin- und Rückweg zeitlich orthogonalisiert. Damit steht für die Übermittlung der Erfolgsmeldung eine beschränkte Zeitdauer zur Verfügung. Je mehr an Kanalzugriffszeit für die Erfolgsmeldungen der potentiell vielen Empfänger verbraucht wird, desto geringer wird die Restzeit, in der dann entsprechend weniger audio-visuelle Nutzdaten übertragbar sind, was sich direkt auf die Dienstqualität auswirkt. Ein in der Literatur weniger ausführlich betrachteter Ansatz ist die gleichzeitige Übertragung von Rückmeldungen mehrerer Teilnehmer auf gleicher Frequenz und bei identischer Bandbreite, sowie unter Nutzung gleichartiger Signale (hier: orthogonale Frequenzmultiplexsignalformung). Das Schema wird in dieser Arbeit daher als zeitliche Aggregation von Rückmeldungen, engl. feedback aggregation, bezeichnet. Dabei wird, unabhängig von der Anzahl der Empfänger, eine konstante Zeitdauer für Rückmeldungen genutzt, womit auch der Datendurchsatz durch zusätzliche Empfänger nicht notwendigerweise sinkt. Diese Eigenschaft ist aus statisch konfigurierten und für einen einzigen Zweck konzipierten Systemen, wie z. B. der terrestrischen Fernsehübertragung, bekannt. In dieser Arbeit werden im Gegensatz dazu jedoch am Beispiel von WLAN Mehrzweck- und Mehrbenutzersysteme betrachtet. Es handelt sich in derartigen Systemen zur digitalen Datenübertragung dabei um einen entscheidenden Vorteil, unabhängig von der Empfängeranzahl zu bleiben, da es sonst unweigerlich zu Einschränkungen in der Güte der angebotenen Dienstleistung der allgegenwärtigen digitalen Vernetzung kommen muss. Vorliegende Arbeit zeigt in diesem Zusammenhang auf, welche Datenraten unter Benutzung von feedback aggregation in der Verteilung an mehrere Empfänger und in verschiedenen Szenarien zu erreichen sind. Hierbei zeigt sich, dass das Schema im Zusammenspiel mit einer Adaption der Datenrate an den Übertragungskanal inhärent einen Datenratengewinn durch Mehrbenutzerempfang zu erzielen vermag, wenn ein überlagerter idealer Paketauslöschungsschutz-Code angenommen wird. Des weiteren wird bei der Übertragung mit zeitlich begrenzter Ausführungsdauer, z. B. dem sogenannten Live-Fernsehen, aufgezeigt, wie sich die erreichbare Datenrate reduziert und welche Restfehlertoleranz an die Übertragung gestellt werden muss. Hierbei wird ebenso aufgezeigt, wie sich durch Verbesserung der Ratenadaption erstere erhöhen und zweitere verringern lässt. An einem auf handelsüblichen Computer-Systemen realisiertem Prototypen zur Live-Fernsehübertragung können die hierin beschriebenen Mechanismen zu großen Teilen gezeigt werden

Final report on the evaluation of RRM/CRRM algorithms

Deliverable public del projecte EVERESTThis deliverable provides a definition and a complete evaluation of the RRM/CRRM algorithms selected in D11 and D15, and evolved and refined on an iterative process. The evaluation will be carried out by means of simulations using the simulators provided at D07, and D14.Preprin

On three use cases of multi-connectivity paradigm in emerging wireless networks

As envisioned by global network operators, the increasing trend of data traffic demand is expected to continue with exponential growth in the coming years. To cope with this rapid increase, significant efforts from the research community, industry and even regulators have been focused towards improving two main aspects of the wireless spectrum: (i) spectrum capacity and (ii) spectral efficiency. Concerning the spectrum capacity enhancement, the multi-connectivity paradigm has been seen to be fundamentally important to solve the capacity problem in the next generation networks. Multi-connectivity is a feature that allows wireless devices to establish and maintain multiple simultaneous connections across homogeneous or heterogeneous technologies. In this thesis, we focus on identifying the core issues in applying the multi-connectivity paradigm for different use cases and propose novel solutions to address them. Specifically, this thesis studies three use cases of the multi-connectivity paradigm. First, we study the uplink/downlink decoupling problem in 4G networks. More specifically, we focus on the user association problem in the decoupling context, which is considered challenging due to the conflicting objectives of different entities (e.g., mobile users and base stations) in the system. We use a combination of matching theory and stochastic geometry to reconcile competing objectives between users in the uplink/downlink directions and also from the perspective of base stations. Second, we tackle the spectrum aggregation problem for wireless backhauling links in unlicensed opportunistic shared spectrum bands, specifically, TV White Space (TVWS) spectrum. In relation to this, we present a DIY mobile network deployment model to accelerate the roll-out of high-end mobile services in rural and developing regions. As part of this model, we highlight the importance of low-cost and high-capacity backhaul infrastructure for which TVWS spectrum can be exploited. Building on that, we conduct a thorough analytical study to identify the characteristics of TVWS in rural areas. Our study sheds light on the nature of TVWS spectrum fragmentation for the backhauling use case, which in turn poses requirements for the design of spectrum aggregation systems for TVWS backhaul. Motivated by these findings, we design and implement WhiteHaul, a flexible platform for spectrum aggregation in TVWS. Three challenges have been tackled in this work. First, TVWS spectrum is fragmented in that the spectrum is available in non-contiguous manner. To fully utilize the available spectrum, multiple radios should be enabled to work simultaneously. However, all the radios have to share only a single antenna. The key challenge is to design a system architecture that is capable of achieving different aggregation configurations while avoiding the interference. Second, the heterogeneous nature of the available spectrum (i.e., in terms of bandwidth and link characteristics) requires a design of efficient traffic distribution algorithm that takes into account these factors. Third, TVWS is unlicensed opportunistic shared spectrum. Thus, the coordination mechanism between the two nodes of backhauling link is essential to enable seamless channel switching. Third, we study the integration of multiple radio access technologies (RATs) in the context of 4G/5G networks. More specifically, we study the potential gain of enabling the Multi-RAT integration at the Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) layer compared with doing it at the transport layer. In this work, we consider ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) as one of the motivating services. This work tackles the different challenges that arise from enabling the Multi-RAT integration at the PDCP layer, including, packet reordering and traffic scheduling

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of-the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

Adaptive intra refresh for robust wireless multi-view video

This thesis was submitted for the award of PhD and was awarded by Brunel University LondonMobile wireless communication technology is a fast developing field and every day new mobile communication techniques and means are becoming available. In this thesis multi-view video (MVV) is also refers to as 3D video. Thus, the 3D video signals through wireless communication are shaping telecommunication industry and academia. However, wireless channels are prone to high level of bit and burst errors that largely deteriorate the quality of service (QoS). Noise along the wireless transmission path can introduce distortion or make a compressed bitstream lose vital information. The error caused by noise progressively spread to subsequent frames and among multiple views due to prediction. This error may compel the receiver to pause momentarily and wait for the subsequent INTRA picture to continue decoding. The pausing of video stream affects the user's Quality of Experience (QoE). Thus, an error resilience strategy is needed to protect the compressed bitstream against transmission errors. This thesis focuses on error resilience Adaptive Intra Refresh (AIR) technique. The AIR method is developed to make the compressed 3D video more robust to channel errors. The process involves periodic injection of Intra-coded macroblocks in a cyclic pattern using H.264/AVC standard. The algorithm takes into account individual features in each macroblock and the feedback information sent by the decoder about the channel condition in order to generate an MVV-AIR map. MVV-AIR map generation regulates the order of packets arrival and identifies the motion activities in each macroblock. Based on the level of motion activity contained in each macroblock, the MVV-AIR map classifies frames as high or low motion macroblocks. A proxy MVV-AIR transcoder is used to validate the efficiency of the generated MVV-AIR map. The MVV-AIR transcoding algorithm uses spatial and views downscaling scheme to convert from MVV to single view. Various experimental results indicate that the proposed error resilient MVV-AIR transcoder technique effectively improves the quality of reconstructed 3D video in wireless networks. A comparison of MVV-AIR transcoder algorithm with some traditional error resilience techniques demonstrates that MVV-AIR algorithm performs better in an error prone channel. Results of simulation revealed significant improvements in both objective and subjective qualities. No additional computational complexity emanates from the scheme while the QoS and QoE requirements are still fully met.Tertiary Institution Trust Fund (TETFund) of Nigeri

Convergence of packet communications over the evolved mobile networks; signal processing and protocol performance

In this thesis, the convergence of packet communications over the evolved mobile networks is studied. The Long Term Evolution (LTE) process is dominating the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in order to bring technologies to the markets in the spirit of continuous innovation. The global markets of mobile information services are growing towards the Mobile Information Society. The thesis begins with the principles and theories of the multiple-access transmission schemes, transmitter receiver techniques and signal processing algorithms. Next, packet communications and Internet protocols are referred from the IETF standards with the characteristics of mobile communications in the focus. The mobile network architecture and protocols bind together the evolved packet system of Internet communications to the radio access network technologies. Specifics of the traffic models are shortly visited for their statistical meaning in the radio performance analysis. Radio resource management algorithms and protocols, also procedures, are covered addressing their relevance for the system performance. Throughout these Chapters, the commonalities and differentiators of the WCDMA, WCDMA/HSPA and LTE are covered. The main outcome of the thesis is the performance analysis of the LTE technology beginning from the early discoveries to the analysis of various system features and finally converging to an extensive system analysis campaign. The system performance is analysed with the characteristics of voice over the Internet and best effort traffic of the Internet. These traffic classes represent the majority of the mobile traffic in the converged packet networks, and yet they are simple enough for a fair and generic analysis of technologies. The thesis consists of publications and inventions created by the author that proposed several improvements to the 3G technologies towards the LTE. In the system analysis, the LTE showed by the factor of at least 2.5 to 3 times higher system measures compared to the WCDMA/HSPA reference. The WCDMA/HSPA networks are currently available with over 400 million subscribers and showing increasing growth, in the meanwhile the first LTE roll-outs are scheduled to begin in 2010. Sophisticated 3G LTE mobile devices are expected to appear fluently for all consumer segments in the following years