A reduced reference video quality assessment method for provision as a service over SDN/NFV-enabled networks

139 p.The proliferation of multimedia applications and services has generarted a noteworthy upsurge in network traffic regarding video content and has created the need for trustworthy service quality assessment methods. Currently, predominent position among the technological trends in telecommunication networkds are Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN) and 5G mobile networks equipped with small cells. Additionally Video Quality Assessment (VQA) methods are a very useful tool for both content providers and network operators, to understand of how users perceive quality and this study the feasibility of potential services and adapt the network available resources to satisfy the user requirements

Error resilient packet switched H.264 video telephony over third generation networks.

Real-time video communication over wireless networks is a challenging problem because wireless channels suffer from fading, additive noise and interference, which translate into packet loss and delay. Since modern video encoders deliver video packets with decoding dependencies, packet loss and delay can significantly degrade the video quality at the receiver. Many error resilience mechanisms have been proposed to combat packet loss in wireless networks, but only a few were specifically designed for packet switched video telephony over Third Generation (3G) networks. The first part of the thesis presents an error resilience technique for packet switched video telephony that combines application layer Forward Error Correction (FEC) with rateless codes, Reference Picture Selection (RPS) and cross layer optimization. Rateless codes have lower encoding and decoding computational complexity compared to traditional error correcting codes. One can use them on complexity constrained hand-held devices. Also, their redundancy does not need to be fixed in advance and any number of encoded symbols can be generated on the fly. Reference picture selection is used to limit the effect of spatio-temporal error propagation. Limiting the effect of spatio-temporal error propagation results in better video quality. Cross layer optimization is used to minimize the data loss at the application layer when data is lost at the data link layer. Experimental results on a High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network simulator for H.264 compressed standard video sequences show that the proposed technique achieves significant Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Percentage Degraded Video Duration (PDVD) improvements over a state of the art error resilience technique known as Interactive Error Control (IEC), which is a combination of Error Tracking and feedback based Reference Picture Selection. The improvement is obtained at a cost of higher end-to-end delay. The proposed technique is improved by making the FEC (Rateless code) redundancy channel adaptive. Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) is used to adjust the redundancy of the Rateless codes according to the channel conditions. Experimental results show that the channel adaptive scheme achieves significant PSNR and PDVD improvements over the static scheme for a simulated Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. In the third part of the thesis, the performance of the previous two schemes is improved by making the transmitter predict when rateless decoding will fail. In this case, reference picture selection is invoked early and transmission of encoded symbols for that source block is aborted. Simulations for an LTE network show that this results in video quality improvement and bandwidth savings. In the last part of the thesis, the performance of the adaptive technique is improved by exploiting the history of the wireless channel. In a Rayleigh fading wireless channel, the RLC-PDU losses are correlated under certain conditions. This correlation is exploited to adjust the redundancy of the Rateless code and results in higher Rateless code decoding success rate and higher video quality. Simulations for an LTE network show that the improvement was significant when the packet loss rate in the two wireless links was 10%. To facilitate the implementation of the proposed error resilience techniques in practical scenarios, RTP/UDP/IP level packetization schemes are also proposed for each error resilience technique. Compared to existing work, the proposed error resilience techniques provide better video quality. Also, more emphasis is given to implementation issues in 3G networks

Video QoS/QoE over IEEE802.11n/ac: A Contemporary Survey

The demand for video applications over wireless networks has tremendously increased, and IEEE 802.11 standards have provided higher support for video transmission. However, providing Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) for video over WLAN is still a challenge due to the error sensitivity of compressed video and dynamic channels. This thesis presents a contemporary survey study on video QoS/QoE over WLAN issues and solutions. The objective of the study is to provide an overview of the issues by conducting a background study on the video codecs and their features and characteristics, followed by studying QoS and QoE support in IEEE 802.11 standards. Since IEEE 802.11n is the current standard that is mostly deployed worldwide and IEEE 802.11ac is the upcoming standard, this survey study aims to investigate the most recent video QoS/QoE solutions based on these two standards. The solutions are divided into two broad categories, academic solutions, and vendor solutions. Academic solutions are mostly based on three main layers, namely Application, Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) which are further divided into two major categories, single-layer solutions, and cross-layer solutions. Single-layer solutions are those which focus on a single layer to enhance the video transmission performance over WLAN. Cross-layer solutions involve two or more layers to provide a single QoS solution for video over WLAN. This thesis has also presented and technically analyzed QoS solutions by three popular vendors. This thesis concludes that single-layer solutions are not directly related to video QoS/QoE, and cross-layer solutions are performing better than single-layer solutions, but they are much more complicated and not easy to be implemented. Most vendors rely on their network infrastructure to provide QoS for multimedia applications. They have their techniques and mechanisms, but the concept of providing QoS/QoE for video is almost the same because they are using the same standards and rely on Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) to provide QoS

Estimation of LRD present in H.264 video traces using wavelet analysis and proving the paramount of H.264 using OPF technique in wi-fi environment.

While there has always been a tremendous demand for streaming video over Wireless networks, the nature of the application still presents some challenging issues. These applications that transmit coded video sequence data over best-effort networks like the Internet, the application must cope with the changing network behaviour; especially, the source encoder rate should be controlled based on feedback from a channel estimator that explores the network intermittently. The arrival of powerful video compression techniques such as H.264, which advance in networking and telecommunications, opened up a whole new frontier for multimedia communications. The aim of this research is to transmit the H.264 coded video frames in the wireless network with maximum reliability and in a very efficient manner. When the H.264 encoded video sequences are to be transmitted through wireless network, it faces major difficulties in reaching the destination. The characteristics of H.264 video coded sequences are studied fully and their capability of transmitting in wireless networks are examined and a new approach called Optimal Packet Fragmentation (OPF) is framed and the H.264 coded sequences are tested in the wireless simulated environment. This research has three major studies involved in it. First part of the research has the study about Long Range Dependence (LRD) and the ways by which the self-similarity can be estimated. For estimating the LRD a few studies are carried out and Wavelet-based estimator is selected for the research because Wavelets incarcerate both time and frequency features in the data and regularly provides a more affluent picture than the classical Fourier analysis. The Wavelet used to estimate the self-similarity by using the variable called Hurst Parameter. Hurst Parameter tells the researcher about how a data can behave inside the transmitted network. This Hurst Parameter should be calculated for a more reliable transmission in the wireless network. The second part of the research deals with MPEG-4 and H.264 encoder. The study is carried out to prove which encoder is superior to the other. We need to know which encoder can provide excellent Quality of Service (QoS) and reliability. This study proves with the help of Hurst parameter that H.264 is superior to MPEG-4. The third part of the study is the vital part in this research; it deals with the H.264 video coded frames that are segmented into optimal packet size in the MAC Layer for an efficient and more reliable transfer in the wireless network. Finally the H.264 encoded video frames incorporated with the Optimal Packet Fragmentation are tested in the NS-2 wireless simulated network. The research proves the superiority of H.264 video encoder and OPF¿s master class

Network-on-Chip Based H.264 Video Decoder on a Field Programmable Gate Array

This thesis develops the first fully network-on-chip (NoC) based h.264 video decoder implemented in real hardware on a field programmable gate array (FPGA). This thesis starts with an overview of the h.264 video coding standard and an introduction to the NoC communication paradigm. Following this, a series of processing elements (PEs) are developed which implement the component algorithms making up the h.264 video decoder. These PEs, described primarily in VHDL with some Verilog and C, are then mapped to an NoC which is generated using the CONNECT NoC generation tool. To demonstrate the scalability of the proposed NoC based design, a second NoC based video decoder is implemented on a smaller FPGA using the same PEs on a more compact NoC topology. The performance of both decoders, as well as their component PEs, is evaluated on real hardware. An analysis of the performance results is conducted and recommendations for future work are made based on the results of this analysis. Aside from the development of the proposed decoder, a major contribution of this thesis is the release of all source materials for this design as open source hardware and software. The release of these materials will allow other researchers to more easily replicate this work, as well as create derivative works in the areas of NoC based designs for FPGA, video coding and decoding, and related areas

Performance analysis of H.264 encoder for high-definition video transmission over ultra-wideband communication link.

With the technological advancement, entertainment has become revolutionized and the High-definition (HD) video has become a common feature of our modern amusement devices. Moreover, the demand for wireless transmission of HD video is rising increasingly for its ubiquitous nature, easy installation and relocation. The high bandwidth requirement is the main concern for wireless transmission of high quality video streams. Research has been going on by the consumer electronics industry to provide different solutions of this issue, for the last few years. In this research work, HD video transmission feasibility using the Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication channel is analyzed. The UWB channel is selected for its short-range, high-speed data transmission capability at low-cost, and low-power consumption. The maximum transmitting range of this technology is about 10 m at 100 Mbps data rate. Simulation is conducted by controlling key parameters, such as, in-loop deblocking filter, group of pictures, and quantization parameter of an H.264/AVC encoder. Here, standard HD video streams with different motion characteristics are used, and the impact of these parameters change on the reconstructed video quality and the broadcasting data rate are analyzed. Finally, a generalized parameters settings, and a video content dependent settings for an H.264/AVC encoder are proposed for different bandwidth requirements, as well as acceptable video quality. Performance evaluation of these parameters settings is performed, and the results are quite satisfactory as long as the symbol energy to noise power density ratio, Es/No, is above 15. With the proposed parameters settings, maximum 20 Mbps data rate is achieved with 33.5 dB Y-PSNR