Slight-Delay Shaped Variable Bit Rate (SD-SVBR) Technique for Video Transmission

The aim of this thesis is to present a new shaped Variable Bit Rate (VBR) for video transmission, which plays a crucial role in delivering video traffic over the Internet. This is due to the surge of video media applications over the Internet and the video typically has the characteristic of a highly bursty traffic, which leads to the Internet bandwidth fluctuation. This new shaped algorithm, referred to as Slight Delay - Shaped Variable Bit Rate (SD-SVBR), is aimed at controlling the video rate for video application transmission. It is designed based on the Shaped VBR (SVBR) algorithm and was implemented in the Network Simulator 2 (ns-2). SVBR algorithm is devised for real-time video applications and it has several limitations and weaknesses due to its embedded estimation or prediction processes. SVBR faces several problems, such as the occurrence of unwanted sharp decrease in data rate, buffer overflow, the existence of a low data rate, and the generation of a cyclical negative fluctuation. The new algorithm is capable of producing a high data rate and at the same time a better quantization parameter (QP) stability video sequence. In addition, the data rate is shaped efficiently to prevent unwanted sharp increment or decrement, and to avoid buffer overflow. To achieve the aim, SD-SVBR has three strategies, which are processing the next Group of Picture (GoP) video sequence and obtaining the QP-to-data rate list, dimensioning the data rate to a higher utilization of the leaky-bucket, and implementing a QP smoothing method by carefully measuring the effects of following the previous QP value. However, this algorithm has to be combined with a network feedback algorithm to produce a better overall video rate control. A combination of several video clips, which consisted of a varied video rate, has been used for the purpose of evaluating SD-SVBR performance. The results showed that SD-SVBR gains an impressive overall Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) value. In addition, in almost all cases, it gains a high video rate but without buffer overflow, utilizes the buffer well, and interestingly, it is still able to obtain smoother QP fluctuation

Lightweight mobile and wireless systems: technologies, architectures, and services

1Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering (ICSE), University of the Aegean, 81100 Mytilene, Greece 2Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI), University of Trento, 38123 Trento, Italy 3Department of Informatics, Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, 574 00 Macedonia, Greece 4Centre Tecnologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), 08860 Barcelona, Spain 5North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, NC 27695, US

Cooperating broadcast and cellular conditional access system for digital television

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The lack of interoperability between Pay‐TV service providers and a horizontally integrated business transaction model have compromised the competition in the Pay‐TV market. In addition, the lack of interactivity with customers has resulted in high churn rate and improper security measures have contributed into considerable business loss. These issues are the main cause of high operational costs and subscription fees in the Pay‐TV systems. This paper presents a novel end‐to‐end system architecture for Pay‐TV systems cooperating mobile and broadcasting technologies. It provides a cost‐effective, scalable, dynamic and secure access control mechanism supporting converged services and new business opportunities in Pay‐TV systems. It enhances interactivity, security and potentially reduces customer attrition and operational cost. In this platform, service providers can effectively interact with their customers, personalise their services and adopt appropriate security measures. It breaks up the rigid relationship between a viewer and set‐top box as imposed by traditional conditional access systems, thus, a viewer can fully enjoy his entitlements via an arbitrary set‐top box. Having thoroughly considered state‐of‐the‐art technologies currently being used across the world, the thesis highlights novel use cases and presents the full design and implementation aspects of the system. The design section is enriched by providing possible security structures supported thereby. A business collaboration structure is proposed, followed by a reference model for implementing the system. Finally, the security architectures are analysed to propose the best architecture on the basis of security, complexity and set‐top box production cost criteria

Error tolerant multimedia stream processing: There's plenty of room at the top (of the system stack)

There is a growing realization that the expected fault rates and energy dissipation stemming from increases in CMOS integration will lead to the abandonment of traditional system reliability in favor of approaches that offer reliability to hardware-induced errors across the application, runtime support, architecture, device and integrated-circuit (IC) layers. Commercial stakeholders of multimedia stream processing (MSP) applications, such as information retrieval, stream mining systems, and high-throughput image and video processing systems already feel the strain of inadequate system-level scaling and robustness under the always-increasing user demand. While such applications can tolerate certain imprecision in their results, today's MSP systems do not support a systematic way to exploit this aspect for cross-layer system resilience. However, research is currently emerging that attempts to utilize the error-tolerant nature of MSP applications for this purpose. This is achieved by modifications to all layers of the system stack, from algorithms and software to the architecture and device layer, and even the IC digital logic synthesis itself. Unlike conventional processing that aims for worst-case performance and accuracy guarantees, error-tolerant MSP attempts to provide guarantees for the expected performance and accuracy. In this paper we review recent advances in this field from an MSP and a system (layer-by-layer) perspective, and attempt to foresee some of the components of future cross-layer error-tolerant system design that may influence the multimedia and the general computing landscape within the next ten years. © 1999-2012 IEEE

Contribution to the construction of fingerprinting and watermarking schemes to protect mobile agents and multimedia content

The main characteristic of fingerprinting codes is the need of high error-correction capacity due to the fact that they are designed to avoid collusion attacks which will damage many symbols from the codewords. Moreover, the use of fingerprinting schemes depends on the watermarking system that is used to embed the codeword into the content and how it honors the marking assumption. In this sense, even though fingerprinting codes were mainly used to protect multimedia content, using them on software protection systems seems an option to be considered. This thesis, studies how to use codes which have iterative-decoding algorithms, mainly turbo-codes, to solve the fingerprinting problem. Initially, it studies the effectiveness of current approaches based on concatenating tradicioanal fingerprinting schemes with convolutional codes and turbo-codes. It is shown that these kind of constructions ends up generating a high number of false positives. Even though this thesis contains some proposals to improve these schemes, the direct use of turbo-codes without using any concatenation with a fingerprinting code as inner code has also been considered. It is shown that the performance of turbo-codes using the appropiate constituent codes is a valid alternative for environments with hundreds of users and 2 or 3 traitors. As constituent codes, we have chosen low-rate convolutional codes with maximum free distance. As for how to use fingerprinting codes with watermarking schemes, we have studied the option of using watermarking systems based on informed coding and informed embedding. It has been discovered that, due to different encodings available for the same symbol, its applicability to embed fingerprints is very limited. On this sense, some modifications to these systems have been proposed in order to properly adapt them to fingerprinting applications. Moreover the behavior and impact over a video produced as a collusion of 2 users by the YouTube’s s ervice has been s tudied. We have also studied the optimal parameters for viable tracking of users who have used YouTube and conspired to redistribute copies generated by a collusion attack. Finally, we have studied how to implement fingerprinting schemes and software watermarking to fix the problem of malicious hosts on mobile agents platforms. In this regard, four different alternatives have been proposed to protect the agent depending on whether you want only detect the attack or avoid it in real time. Two of these proposals are focused on the protection of intrusion detection systems based on mobile agents. Moreover, each of these solutions has several implications in terms of infrastructure and complexity.Els codis fingerprinting es caracteritzen per proveir una alta capacitat correctora ja que han de fer front a atacs de confabulació que malmetran una part important dels símbols de la paraula codi. D'atra banda, la utilització de codis de fingerprinting en entorns reals està subjecta a que l'esquema de watermarking que gestiona la incrustació sigui respectuosa amb la marking assumption. De la mateixa manera, tot i que el fingerprinting neix de la protecció de contingut multimèdia, utilitzar-lo en la protecció de software comença a ser una aplicació a avaluar. En aquesta tesi s'ha estudiat com aplicar codis amb des codificació iterativa, concretament turbo-codis, al problema del rastreig de traïdors en el context del fingerprinting digital. Inicialment s'ha qüestionat l'eficàcia dels enfocaments actuals en la utilització de codis convolucionals i turbo-codis que plantegen concatenacions amb esquemes habituals de fingerprinting. S'ha demostrat que aquest tipus de concatenacions portaven, de forma implícita, a una elevada probabilitat d'inculpar un usuari innocent. Tot i que s'han proposat algunes millores sobre aquests esquemes , finalment s'ha plantejat l'ús de turbocodis directament, evitant així la concatenació amb altres esquemes de fingerprinting. S'ha demostrat que, si s'utilitzen els codis constituents apropiats, el rendiment del turbo-descodificador és suficient per a ser una alternativa aplicable en entorns amb varis centenars d'usuaris i 2 o 3 confabuladors . Com a codis constituents s'ha optat pels codis convolucionals de baix ràtio amb distància lliure màxima. Pel que fa a com utilitzar els codis de fingerprinting amb esquemes de watermarking, s'ha estudiat l'opció d'utilitzar sistemes de watermarking basats en la codificació i la incrustació informada. S'ha comprovat que, degut a la múltiple codificació del mateix símbol, la seva aplicabilitat per incrustar fingerprints és molt limitada. En aquest sentit s'ha plantejat algunes modificacions d'aquests sistemes per tal d'adaptar-los correctament a aplicacions de fingerprinting. D'altra banda s'ha avaluat el comportament i l'impacte que el servei de YouTube produeix sobre un vídeo amb un fingerprint incrustat. A més , s'ha estudiat els paràmetres òptims per a fer viable el rastreig d'usuaris que han confabulat i han utilitzat YouTube per a redistribuir la copia fruït de la seva confabulació. Finalment, s'ha estudiat com aplicar els esquemes de fingerprinting i watermarking de software per solucionar el problema de l'amfitrió maliciós en agents mòbils . En aquest sentit s'han proposat quatre alternatives diferents per a protegir l'agent en funció de si és vol només detectar l'atac o evitar-lo en temps real. Dues d'aquestes propostes es centren en la protecció de sistemes de detecció d'intrusions basats en agents mòbils. Cadascuna de les solucions té diverses implicacions a nivell d'infrastructura i de complexitat.Postprint (published version

The SANDRA project: cooperative architecture/compiler technology for embedded real-time streaming applications

The convergence of digital television, Internet access, gaming, and digital media capture and playback stresses the importance of high-quality and high-performance video and graphics processing. The SANDRA project, a collaboration between Philips Research and INRIA, develops a consistent and efficient system design approach for regular, real-time constrained stream processing. The project aims at providing a system template with its associated compiler chain and application development framework, enabling an early validation of both the functional and the non-functional requirements of the application at every system design stage

Low delay video coding

Analogue wireless cameras have been employed for decades, however they have not become an universal solution due to their difficulties of set up and use. The main problem is the link robustness which mainly depends on the requirement of a line-of-sight view between transmitter and receiver, a working condition not always possible. Despite the use of tracking antenna system such as the Portable Intelligent Tracking Antenna (PITA [1]), if strong multipath fading occurs (e.g. obstacles between transmitter and receiver) the picture rapidly falls apart. Digital wireless cameras based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation schemes give a valid solution for the above problem. OFDM offers strong multipath protection due to the insertion of the guard interval; in particular, the OFDM-based DVB-T standard has proven to offer excellent performance for the broadcasting of multimedia streams with bit rates over 10 Mbps in difficult terrestrial propagation channels, for fixed and portable applications. However, in typical conditions, the latency needed to compress/decompress a digital video signal at Standard Definition (SD) resolution is of the order of 15 frames, which corresponds to ≃ 0.5 sec. This delay introduces a serious problem when wireless and wired cameras have to be interfaced. Cabled cameras do not use compression, because the cable which directly links transmitter and receiver does not impose restrictive bandwidth constraints. Therefore, the only latency that affects a cable cameras link system is the on cable propagation delay, almost not significant, when switching between wired and wireless cameras, the residual latency makes it impossible to achieve the audio-video synchronization, with consequent disagreeable effects. A way to solve this problem is to provide a low delay digital processing scheme based on a video coding algorithm which avoids massive intermediate data storage. The analysis of the last MPEG based coding standards puts in evidence a series of problems which limits the real performance of a low delay MPEG coding system. The first effort of this work is to study the MPEG standard to understand its limit from both the coding delay and implementation complexity points of views. This thesis also investigates an alternative solution based on HERMES codec, a proprietary algorithm which is described implemented and evaluated. HERMES achieves better results than MPEG in terms of latency and implementation complexity, at the price of higher compression ratios, which means high output bit rates. The use of HERMES codec together with an enhanced OFDM system [2] leads to a competitive solution for wireless digital professional video applications

Evaluation of unidirectional background push content download services for the delivery of television programs

Este trabajo de tesis presenta los servicios de descarga de contenido en modo push como un mecanismo eficiente para el envío de contenido de televisión pre-producido sobre redes de difusión. Hoy en día, los operadores de red dedican una cantidad considerable de recursos de red a la entrega en vivo de contenido televisivo, tanto sobre redes de difusión como sobre conexiones unidireccionales. Esta oferta de servicios responde únicamente a requisitos comerciales: disponer de los contenidos televisivos en cualquier momento y lugar. Sin embargo, desde un punto de vista estrictamente académico, el envío en vivo es únicamente un requerimiento para el contenido en vivo, no para contenidos que ya han sido producidos con anterioridad a su emisión. Más aún, la difusión es solo eficiente cuando el contenido es suficientemente popular. Los servicios bajo estudio en esta tesis utilizan capacidad residual en redes de difusión para enviar contenido pre-producido para que se almacene en los equipos de usuario. La propuesta se justifica únicamente por su eficiencia. Por un lado, genera valor de recursos de red que no se aprovecharían de otra manera. Por otro lado, realiza la entrega de contenidos pre-producidos y populares de la manera más eficiente: sobre servicios de descarga de contenidos en difusión. Los resultados incluyen modelos para la popularidad y la duración de contenidos, valiosos para cualquier trabajo de investigación basados en la entrega de contenidos televisivos. Además, la tesis evalúa la capacidad residual disponible en redes de difusión, por medio de estudios empíricos. Después, estos resultados son utilizados en simulaciones que evalúan las prestaciones de los servicios propuestos en escenarios diferentes y para aplicaciones diferentes. La evaluación demuestra que este tipo de servicios son un recurso muy útil para la entrega de contenido televisivo.This thesis dissertation presents background push Content Download Services as an efficient mechanism to deliver pre-produced television content through existing broadcast networks. Nowadays, network operators dedicate a considerable amount of network resources to live streaming live, through both broadcast and unicast connections. This service offering responds solely to commercial requirements: Content must be available anytime and anywhere. However, from a strictly academic point of view, live streaming is only a requirement for live content and not for pre-produced content. Moreover, broadcasting is only efficient when the content is sufficiently popular. The services under study in this thesis use residual capacity in broadcast networks to push popular, pre-produced content to storage capacity in customer premises equipment. The proposal responds only to efficiency requirements. On one hand, it creates value from network resources otherwise unused. On the other hand, it delivers popular pre-produced content in the most efficient way: through broadcast download services. The results include models for the popularity and the duration of television content, valuable for any research work dealing with file-based delivery of television content. Later, the thesis evaluates the residual capacity available in broadcast networks through empirical studies. These results are used in simulations to evaluate the performance of background push content download services in different scenarios and for different applications. The evaluation proves that this kind of services can become a great asset for the delivery of television contentFraile Gil, F. (2013). Evaluation of unidirectional background push content download services for the delivery of television programs [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/31656TESI