A Statistical Approach to Adaptive Playout Scheduling in Voice Over Internet Protocol Communication

Factors like network delay, latency and bandwidth significantly affect the quality of communication using Voice over Internet Protocol. The use of jitter buffer at the receiving end compensates the effect of varying network delay up to some extent. But the extra buffer delay given for each packet plays a major role in playing late packets and thereby improving voice quality. As the buffer delay increases packet loss rate decreases, which in general is a very good sign. However, an increase of buffer delay beyond a certain limit affects the interactive quality of voice communication. In this paper, we propose a statistical framework for adaptive playout scheduling of voice packets based on network statistics, packet loss rate and availability of packets in the buffer. Experimental results show that the proposed model allocates optimal buffer delay with the lowest packet loss rate when compared with other algorithms

System Integration for Medical Data Dissemination and Multimedia Communication in the Implementation of Tele-ECG and Teleconsultation

One of the options to extend medical services coverage is deploying a telemedicine system, where medical personnel make use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to overcome distance and time constraints. The implementation of telemedicine systems in Indonesia faces challenges posed by the lack of ICT infrastructure availability, such as communication networks, data centres, and other computing resources. To deal with these challenges, a telemedicine innovation needs to produce a modular and flexible system that is adaptive to medical services needed and the available ICT infrastructure. This paper presents research and development of a telemedicine system prototype for tele-electrocardiography (tele-ECG) and teleconsultation. The contributions offered are integrating system from various open-source modules and the system operational feasibility based on its function and performance. The research is conducted on a testbed which represents various components involved in the telemedicine system operation. Experiments are carried out to assess the system functionality and observe whether tele-ECG and teleconsultation reach their expected performance. Experiment results show that the system works properly and recommend several multimedia communication modes to achieve the target quality based on the available network bandwidth

Synchronization of Telemedicine Applications: Specification and Implementation

Telemedicine refers to the use of networked computers to perform health care tasks, like diagnosis, therapy and follow-up. Medical images represent the essential information exchanged by telemedicine systems and are characterized by specific requirements concerning acquisition, storage, transmission and analysis modalities. In the telemedicine systems, medical image communication is performed over Transmission-Control Protocols (TCP). Real-time protocols for ATM-based multimedia networks are under study. We propose a new system for medical image communication where the physician is enabled to browse remote medical images, at high-resolution and in real-time. This system has two innovative features: a better organization of the image data for a fast access to the high-resolution images (hierarchical database) and the integration of synchronization mechanism at the visualization level of the application (requirements, specification and implementation). This document addresses a method to facilitate the design of a synchronization mechanism for telemedicine applications: with this method, a Time Petri Net model of the system is obtained and the end-to-end synchronization requirements are transformed in component specific parameters. In a second phase, the Petri Net model is used to design the synchronization mechanism and to guarantee that synchronization requirements are fulfilled at run-time, monitoring and modifying the state of the system, according to the resource usage and the specified behavior. Keywords: telemedicine, synchronization, Petri Nets

Inter-Destination Multimedia Synchronization; Schemes, Use Cases and Standardization

Traditionally, the media consumption model has been a passive and isolated activity. However, the advent of media streaming technologies, interactive social applications, and synchronous communications, as well as the convergence between these three developments, point to an evolution towards dynamic shared media experiences. In this new model, geographically distributed groups of consumers, independently of their location and the nature of their end-devices, can be immersed in a common virtual networked environment in which they can share multimedia services, interact and collaborate in real-time within the context of simultaneous media content consumption. In most of these multimedia services and applications, apart from the well-known intra and inter-stream synchronization techniques that are important inside the consumers playout devices, also the synchronization of the playout processes between several distributed receivers, known as multipoint, group or Inter-destination multimedia synchronization (IDMS), becomes essential. Due to the increasing popularity of social networking, this type of multimedia synchronization has gained in popularity in recent years. Although Social TV is perhaps the most prominent use case in which IDMS is useful, in this paper we present up to 19 use cases for IDMS, each one having its own synchronization requirements. Different approaches used in the (recent) past by researchers to achieve IDMS are described and compared. As further proof of the significance of IDMS nowadays, relevant organizations (such as ETSI TISPAN and IETF AVTCORE Group) efforts on IDMS standardization (in which authors have been and are participating actively), defining architectures and protocols, are summarized.This work has been financed, partially, by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV), under its R&D Support Program in PAID-05-11-002-331 Project and in PAID-01-10, and by TNO, under its Future Internet Use Research & Innovation Program. The authors also want to thank Kevin Gross for providing some of the use cases included in Sect. 1.2.Montagud, M.; Boronat Segui, F.; Stokking, H.; Van Brandenburg, R. (2012). Inter-Destination Multimedia Synchronization; Schemes, Use Cases and Standardization. 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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

Inter-destination Multimedia Synchronization: A Contemporary Survey

The advent of social networking applications, media streaming technologies, and synchronous communications has created an evolution towards dynamic shared media experiences. In this new model, geographically distributed groups of users can be immersed in a common virtual networked environment in which they can interact and collaborate in real- time within the context of simultaneous media content consumption. In this environment, intra-stream and inter-stream synchronization techniques are used inside the consumers’ playout devices, while synchronization of media streams across multiple separated locations is required. This synchronization is nown as multipoint, group or Inter-Destination Multimedia Synchronization (IDMS) and is needed in many applications such as social TV and synchronous e-learning. This survey paper discusses intraand inter-stream synchronization issues, but it mainly focuses on the most well-known IDMS techniques that can be used in emerging distributed multimedia applications. In addition, it provides some research directions for future work

Streaming Video Performance and Enhancements in Resource-Constrained Wireless Networks

Streaming video is an increasingly popular application in wireless networks. The concept of a live streaming video yields several enticing possibilities: real-time video conferencing, television broadcasting, pay-per-view movie streaming, and more. These ideas have already been explored via the internet and have met with mixed success, largely due to the shortcomings of the underlying network. Taking streaming video to wireless networks, then, poses several significant challenges. Wireless networks are inherently more susceptible to failures and data corruption due to their unstable communications medium. This volatility suggests serious drawbacks for any implementation of streaming video. Video frame errors, jitter, and even complete sync loss are entirely conceivable in a wireless environment. Many of these issues have been undertaken and several approaches to mediation or even solution of these problems are underway. This thesis proposes to use advanced simulation techniques to properly exhaustively permute many vital parameters within a UMTS network and uncover, if they exist, bottlenecks in UMTS performance under considerable network load. This is accomplished via a described testing plan with simulation environment. Additionally this thesis proposes a new UDP-like transport layer specially optimized for streaming media over resource-constrained networks, tested to work with significant improvements under the UMTS cellular networking system. Finally this thesis provides several innovative new methods in the furtherance of the field of streaming media research in resourceconstrained and cellular environments. Overall this thesis makes several important contributes to an exciting and ever-growing field of active research and discussion