A Mobile Geo-Communication Dataset for Physiology-Aware DASH in Rural Ambulance Transport

Use of telecommunication technologies for remote, continuous monitoring of patients can enhance effectiveness of emergency ambulance care during transport from rural areas to a regional center hospital. However, the communication along the various routes in rural areas may have wide bandwidth ranges from 2G to 4G; some regions may have only lower satellite bandwidth available. Bandwidth fluctuation together with real-time communication of various clinical multimedia pose a major challenge during rural patient ambulance transport.; AB@The availability of a pre-transport route-dependent communication bandwidth database is an important resource in remote monitoring and clinical multimedia transmission in rural ambulance transport. Here, we present a geo-communication dataset from extensive profiling of 4 major US mobile carriers in Illinois, from the rural location of Hoopeston to the central referral hospital center at Urbana. In collaboration with Carle Foundation Hospital, we developed a profiler, and collected various geographical and communication traces for realistic emergency rural ambulance transport scenarios. Our dataset is to support our ongoing work of proposing "physiology-aware DASH", which is particularly useful for adaptive remote monitoring of critically ill patients in emergency rural ambulance transport. It provides insights on ensuring higher Quality of Service (QoS) for most critical clinical multimedia in response to changes in patients' physiological states and bandwidth conditions. Our dataset is available online for research community.Comment: Proceedings of the 8th ACM on Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys'17), Pages 158-163, Taipei, Taiwan, June 20 - 23, 201

A Utility-based QoS Model for Emerging Multimedia Applications

Existing network QoS models do not sufficiently reflect the challenges faced by high-throughput, always-on, inelastic multimedia applications. In this paper, a utility-based QoS model is proposed as a user layer extension to existing communication QoS models to better assess the requirements of multimedia applications and manage the QoS provisioning of multimedia flows. Network impairment utility functions are derived from user experiments and combined to application utility functions to evaluate the application quality. Simulation is used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed QoS model

An Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Communication Scheme for Body Sensor Networks

A high degree of reliability for critical data transmission is required in body sensor networks (BSNs). However, BSNs are usually vulnerable to channel impairments due to body fading effect and RF interference, which may potentially cause data transmission to be unreliable. In this paper, an adaptive and flexible fault-tolerant communication scheme for BSNs, namely AFTCS, is proposed. AFTCS adopts a channel bandwidth reservation strategy to provide reliable data transmission when channel impairments occur. In order to fulfill the reliability requirements of critical sensors, fault-tolerant priority and queue are employed to adaptively adjust the channel bandwidth allocation. Simulation results show that AFTCS can alleviate the effect of channel impairments, while yielding lower packet loss rate and latency for critical sensors at runtime.Comment: 10 figures, 19 page

Network-aware Adaptation with Real-Time Channel Statistics for Wireless LAN Multimedia Transmissions in the Digital Home

This paper suggests the use of intelligent network-aware processing agents in wireless local area network drivers to generate metrics for bandwidth estimation based on real-time channel statistics to enable wireless multimedia application adaptation. Various configurations in the wireless digital home are studied and the experimental results with performance variations are presented.Comment: 6 pages, 12 figure

Using RTT Variability for Adaptive Cross-Layer Approach to Multimedia Delivery in Heterogeneous Networks

A holistic approach should be made for a wider adoption of a cross-layer approach. A cross-layer design on a wireless network assumed with a certain network condition, for instance, can have a limited usage in heterogeneous environments with diverse access network technologies and time varying network performance. The first step toward a cross-layer approach is an automatic detection of the underlying access network type, so that appropriate schemes can be applied without manual configurations. To address the issue, we investigate the characteristics of round-trip time (RTT) on wireless and wired networks. We conduct extensive experiments from diverse network environments and perform quantitative analyses on RTT variability. We show that RTT variability on a wireless network exhibits greatly larger mean, standard deviation, and min-to-high percentiles at least 10 ms bigger than those of wired networks due to the MAC layer retransmissions. We also find that the impact of packet size on wireless channel is particularly significant. Thus through a simple set of testing, one can accurately classify whether or not there has been a wireless network involved. We then propose effective adaptive cross-layer schemes for multimedia delivery over error-prone links. They include limiting the MAC layer retransmissions, controlling the application layer forward error correction (FEC) level, and selecting an optimal packet size. We conduct an analysis on the interplay of those adaptive parameters given a network condition. It enables us to find optimal cross-layer adaptive parameters when they are used concurrently.IEEE Circuits & Systems Societ

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Quality of experience and access network traffic management of HTTP adaptive video streaming

The thesis focuses on Quality of Experience (QoE) of HTTP adaptive video streaming (HAS) and traffic management in access networks to improve the QoE of HAS. First, the QoE impact of adaptation parameters and time on layer was investigated with subjective crowdsourcing studies. The results were used to compute a QoE-optimal adaptation strategy for given video and network conditions. This allows video service providers to develop and benchmark improved adaptation logics for HAS. Furthermore, the thesis investigated concepts to monitor video QoE on application and network layer, which can be used by network providers in the QoE-aware traffic management cycle. Moreover, an analytic and simulative performance evaluation of QoE-aware traffic management on a bottleneck link was conducted. Finally, the thesis investigated socially-aware traffic management for HAS via Wi-Fi offloading of mobile HAS flows. A model for the distribution of public Wi-Fi hotspots and a platform for socially-aware traffic management on private home routers was presented. A simulative performance evaluation investigated the impact of Wi-Fi offloading on the QoE and energy consumption of mobile HAS.Die Doktorarbeit beschäftigt sich mit Quality of Experience (QoE) – der subjektiv empfundenen Dienstgüte – von adaptivem HTTP Videostreaming (HAS) und mit Verkehrsmanagement, das in Zugangsnetzwerken eingesetzt werden kann, um die QoE des adaptiven Videostreamings zu verbessern. Zuerst wurde der Einfluss von Adaptionsparameters und der Zeit pro Qualitätsstufe auf die QoE von adaptivem Videostreaming mittels subjektiver Crowdsourcingstudien untersucht. Die Ergebnisse wurden benutzt, um die QoE-optimale Adaptionsstrategie für gegebene Videos und Netzwerkbedingungen zu berechnen. Dies ermöglicht Dienstanbietern von Videostreaming verbesserte Adaptionsstrategien für adaptives Videostreaming zu entwerfen und zu benchmarken. Weiterhin untersuchte die Arbeit Konzepte zum Überwachen von QoE von Videostreaming in der Applikation und im Netzwerk, die von Netzwerkbetreibern im Kreislauf des QoE-bewussten Verkehrsmanagements eingesetzt werden können. Außerdem wurde eine analytische und simulative Leistungsbewertung von QoE-bewusstem Verkehrsmanagement auf einer Engpassverbindung durchgeführt. Schließlich untersuchte diese Arbeit sozialbewusstes Verkehrsmanagement für adaptives Videostreaming mittels WLAN Offloading, also dem Auslagern von mobilen Videoflüssen über WLAN Netzwerke. Es wurde ein Modell für die Verteilung von öffentlichen WLAN Zugangspunkte und eine Plattform für sozialbewusstes Verkehrsmanagement auf privaten, häuslichen WLAN Routern vorgestellt. Abschließend untersuchte eine simulative Leistungsbewertung den Einfluss von WLAN Offloading auf die QoE und den Energieverbrauch von mobilem adaptivem Videostreaming

Discrete Multitone Modulation for Maximizing Transmission Rate in Step-Index Plastic Optical Fibres

The use of standard 1-mm core-diameter step-index plastic optical fiber (SI-POF) has so far been mainly limited to distances of up to 100 m and bit-rates in the order of 100 Mbit/s. By use of digital signal processing, transmission performance of such optical links can be improved. Among the different technical solutions proposed, a promising one is based on the use of discrete multitone (DMT) modulation, directly applied to intensity-modulated, direct detection (IM/DD) SI-POF links. This paper presents an overview of DMT over SI-POF and demonstrates how DMT can be used to improve transmission rate in such IM/DD systems. The achievable capacity of an SI-POF channel is first analyzed theoretically and then validated by experimental results. Additionally, first experimental demonstrations of a real-time DMT over SI-POF system are presented and discusse