Random Linear Network Coding for 5G Mobile Video Delivery

An exponential increase in mobile video delivery will continue with the demand for higher resolution, multi-view and large-scale multicast video services. Novel fifth generation (5G) 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard will bring a number of new opportunities for optimizing video delivery across both 5G core and radio access networks. One of the promising approaches for video quality adaptation, throughput enhancement and erasure protection is the use of packet-level random linear network coding (RLNC). In this review paper, we discuss the integration of RLNC into the 5G NR standard, building upon the ideas and opportunities identified in 4G LTE. We explicitly identify and discuss in detail novel 5G NR features that provide support for RLNC-based video delivery in 5G, thus pointing out to the promising avenues for future research.Comment: Invited paper for Special Issue "Network and Rateless Coding for Video Streaming" - MDPI Informatio

Scalable video/image transmission using rate compatible PUM turbo codes

The robust delivery of video over emerging wireless networks poses many challenges due to the heterogeneity of access networks, the variations in streaming devices, and the expected variations in network conditions caused by interference and coexistence. The proposed approach exploits the joint optimization of a wavelet-based scalable video/image coding framework and a forward error correction method based on PUM turbo codes. The scheme minimizes the reconstructed image/video distortion at the decoder subject to a constraint on the overall transmission bitrate budget. The minimization is achieved by exploiting the rate optimization technique and the statistics of the transmission channel

Hybrid FLUTE/DASH video delivery over mobile wireless networks

This paper describes how FLUTE (File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport) and DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) can be used to provide mobile video streaming services over broadcast wireless networks. FLUTE is a multicast protocol for multimedia file download. In this proposal, the protocol is adapted to provide video streaming services in crowded environments. Thus, video is delivered over a single connection to all viewers, reducing the traffic in the network. FLUTE incorporates an AL-FEC (Application Layered Forward Error Correction) mechanism in order to improve the reliability of the broadcast communication channel. For streaming applications, AL-FEC improves the relationship between the PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) of the received video and the bandwidth allocated to the broadcast connection. The AL-FEC hereby presented applies simple unequal error protection schemes to favor the download of key frames. Furthermore, the proposal is based on the same video segmentation mechanism as DASH and therefore, clients can connect to a DASH repository to repair errors in the segments. This paper shows that FLUTE and DASH can be seamlessly integrated into a hybrid broadcast/unicast streaming technology, providing flexibility to trade off PSNR and bandwidth depending on the conditions of the mobile network.This work was supported by the 11012 ICARE (Innovative Cloud Architecture for Real Entertainment) project within the ITEA 2 Call 6 Program of the European Union.Belda Ortega, R.; De Fez Lava, I.; Fraile Gil, F.; Arce Vila, P.; Guerri Cebollada, JC. (2014). Hybrid FLUTE/DASH video delivery over mobile wireless networks. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies. 25(11):1070-1082. doi:10.1002/ett.2804S107010822511ETSI TS 126 346 v11.3.0. Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS); LTE; Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS); Protocols and Codecs 2013Lecompte, D., & Gabin, F. (2012). Evolved multimedia broadcast/multicast service (eMBMS) in LTE-advanced: overview and Rel-11 enhancements. IEEE Communications Magazine, 50(11), 68-74. doi:10.1109/mcom.2012.6353684Stockhammer T Luby MG DASH in mobile networks and services. Presented at IEEE Visual Communications and Image Processing (VCIP) , 2012Seeling, P., & Reisslein, M. (2012). Video Transport Evaluation With H.264 Video Traces. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 14(4), 1142-1165. doi:10.1109/surv.2011.082911.00067Zhao, S., Tuninetti, D., Ansari, R., & Schonfeld, D. (2012). Multiple description coding over multiple correlated erasure channels. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 23(6), 522-536. doi:10.1002/ett.2507Lin, C.-H., Wang, Y.-C., Shieh, C.-K., & Hwang, W.-S. (2012). An unequal error protection mechanism for video streaming over IEEE 802.11e WLANs. Computer Networks, 56(11), 2590-2599. doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2012.04.004Paila T Walsh R Luby M Roca V Lehtonen R FLUTE - file delivery over unidirectional transport. 2012Luby M Watson M Vicisano L Asynchronous layered coding (ALC) protocol instantiation. 2010Ameigeiras, P., Ramos-Munoz, J. J., Navarro-Ortiz, J., & Lopez-Soler, J. M. (2012). Analysis and modelling of YouTube traffic. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, 23(4), 360-377. doi:10.1002/ett.2546ISO/IEC 23009-1. Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) - Part 1: media presentation description and segment formats 2012De Fez, I., Fraile, F., Belda, R., & Guerri, J. C. (2012). Analysis and Evaluation of Adaptive LDPC AL-FEC Codes for Content Download Services. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 14(3), 641-650. doi:10.1109/tmm.2012.2190392Jenkac, H., Stockhammer, T., & Wen Xu. (2006). Asynchronous and reliable on-demand media broadcast. IEEE Network, 20(2), 14-20. doi:10.1109/mnet.2006.1607891Neumann C Roca V Scalable video streaming over ALC (SVSoA): a solution for the large scale multicast distribution of videos. Presented at 1st Int. Workshop on SMDI , 2004Lederer S Müller C Timmerer C Dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP dataset Proc. of the ACM Conference on Multimedia Systems (MMSys) 2012 89 94Blender Foundation webpage http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/Bai, H., & Atiquzzaman, M. (2003). Error modeling schemes for fading channels in wireless communications: A survey. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 5(2), 2-9. doi:10.1109/comst.2003.5341334Ohm, J.-R. (2004). Multimedia Communication Technology. Signals and Communication Technology. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-18750-

Content-Aware Multimedia Communications

The demands for fast, economic and reliable dissemination of multimedia information are steadily growing within our society. While people and economy increasingly rely on communication technologies, engineers still struggle with their growing complexity. Complexity in multimedia communication originates from several sources. The most prominent is the unreliability of packet networks like the Internet. Recent advances in scheduling and error control mechanisms for streaming protocols have shown that the quality and robustness of multimedia delivery can be improved significantly when protocols are aware of the content they deliver. However, the proposed mechanisms require close cooperation between transport systems and application layers which increases the overall system complexity. Current approaches also require expensive metrics and focus on special encoding formats only. A general and efficient model is missing so far. This thesis presents efficient and format-independent solutions to support cross-layer coordination in system architectures. In particular, the first contribution of this work is a generic dependency model that enables transport layers to access content-specific properties of media streams, such as dependencies between data units and their importance. The second contribution is the design of a programming model for streaming communication and its implementation as a middleware architecture. The programming model hides the complexity of protocol stacks behind simple programming abstractions, but exposes cross-layer control and monitoring options to application programmers. For example, our interfaces allow programmers to choose appropriate failure semantics at design time while they can refine error protection and visibility of low-level errors at run-time. Based on some examples we show how our middleware simplifies the integration of stream-based communication into large-scale application architectures. An important result of this work is that despite cross-layer cooperation, neither application nor transport protocol designers experience an increase in complexity. Application programmers can even reuse existing streaming protocols which effectively increases system robustness.Der Bedarf unsere Gesellschaft nach kostengünstiger und zuverlässiger Kommunikation wächst stetig. Während wir uns selbst immer mehr von modernen Kommunikationstechnologien abhängig machen, müssen die Ingenieure dieser Technologien sowohl den Bedarf nach schneller Einführung neuer Produkte befriedigen als auch die wachsende Komplexität der Systeme beherrschen. Gerade die Übertragung multimedialer Inhalte wie Video und Audiodaten ist nicht trivial. Einer der prominentesten Gründe dafür ist die Unzuverlässigkeit heutiger Netzwerke, wie z.B.~dem Internet. Paketverluste und schwankende Laufzeiten können die Darstellungsqualität massiv beeinträchtigen. Wie jüngste Entwicklungen im Bereich der Streaming-Protokolle zeigen, sind jedoch Qualität und Robustheit der Übertragung effizient kontrollierbar, wenn Streamingprotokolle Informationen über den Inhalt der transportierten Daten ausnutzen. Existierende Ansätze, die den Inhalt von Multimediadatenströmen beschreiben, sind allerdings meist auf einzelne Kompressionsverfahren spezialisiert und verwenden berechnungsintensive Metriken. Das reduziert ihren praktischen Nutzen deutlich. Außerdem erfordert der Informationsaustausch eine enge Kooperation zwischen Applikationen und Transportschichten. Da allerdings die Schnittstellen aktueller Systemarchitekturen nicht darauf vorbereitet sind, müssen entweder die Schnittstellen erweitert oder alternative Architekturkonzepte geschaffen werden. Die Gefahr beider Varianten ist jedoch, dass sich die Komplexität eines Systems dadurch weiter erhöhen kann. Das zentrale Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es deshalb, schichtenübergreifende Koordination bei gleichzeitiger Reduzierung der Komplexität zu erreichen. Hier leistet die Arbeit zwei Beträge zum aktuellen Stand der Forschung. Erstens definiert sie ein universelles Modell zur Beschreibung von Inhaltsattributen, wie Wichtigkeiten und Abhängigkeitsbeziehungen innerhalb eines Datenstroms. Transportschichten können dieses Wissen zur effizienten Fehlerkontrolle verwenden. Zweitens beschreibt die Arbeit das Noja Programmiermodell für multimediale Middleware. Noja definiert Abstraktionen zur Übertragung und Kontrolle multimedialer Ströme, die die Koordination von Streamingprotokollen mit Applikationen ermöglichen. Zum Beispiel können Programmierer geeignete Fehlersemantiken und Kommunikationstopologien auswählen und den konkreten Fehlerschutz dann zur Laufzeit verfeinern und kontrolliere

Unequal Error Protected JPEG 2000 Broadcast Scheme with Progressive Fountain Codes

This paper proposes a novel scheme, based on progressive fountain codes, for broadcasting JPEG 2000 multimedia. In such a broadcast scheme, progressive resolution levels of images/video have been unequally protected when transmitted using the proposed progressive fountain codes. With progressive fountain codes applied in the broadcast scheme, the resolutions of images (JPEG 2000) or videos (MJPEG 2000) received by different users can be automatically adaptive to their channel qualities, i.e. the users with good channel qualities are possible to receive the high resolution images/vedio while the users with bad channel qualities may receive low resolution images/vedio. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated with the MJPEG 2000 broadcast prototype