Semantic multimedia remote display for mobile thin clients

Current remote display technologies for mobile thin clients convert practically all types of graphical content into sequences of images rendered by the client. Consequently, important information concerning the content semantics is lost. The present paper goes beyond this bottleneck by developing a semantic multimedia remote display. The principle consists of representing the graphical content as a real-time interactive multimedia scene graph. The underlying architecture features novel components for scene-graph creation and management, as well as for user interactivity handling. The experimental setup considers the Linux X windows system and BiFS/LASeR multimedia scene technologies on the server and client sides, respectively. The implemented solution was benchmarked against currently deployed solutions (VNC and Microsoft-RDP), by considering text editing and WWW browsing applications. The quantitative assessments demonstrate: (1) visual quality expressed by seven objective metrics, e.g., PSNR values between 30 and 42 dB or SSIM values larger than 0.9999; (2) downlink bandwidth gain factors ranging from 2 to 60; (3) real-time user event management expressed by network round-trip time reduction by factors of 4-6 and by uplink bandwidth gain factors from 3 to 10; (4) feasible CPU activity, larger than in the RDP case but reduced by a factor of 1.5 with respect to the VNC-HEXTILE

Low-Latency Scheduling in MPTCP

The demand for mobile communication is continuously increasing, and mobile devices are now the communication device of choice for many people. To guarantee connectivity and performance, mobile devices are typically equipped with multiple interfaces. To this end, exploiting multiple available interfaces is also a crucial aspect of the upcoming 5G standard for reducing costs, easing network management, and providing a good user experience. Multi-path protocols, such as multi-path TCP (MPTCP), can be used to provide performance optimization through load-balancing and resilience to coverage drops and link failures, however, they do not automatically guarantee better performance. For instance, low-latency communication has been proven hard to achieve when a device has network interfaces with asymmetric capacity and delay (e.g., LTE and WLAN). For multi-path communication, the data scheduler is vital to provide low latency, since it decides over which network interface to send individual data segments. In this paper, we focus on the MPTCP scheduler with the goal of providing a good user experience for latency-sensitive applications when interface quality is asymmetric. After an initial assessment of existing scheduling algorithms, we present two novel scheduling techniques: the block estimation (BLEST) scheduler and the shortest transmission time first (STTF) scheduler. BLEST and STTF are compared with existing schedulers in both emulated and real-world environments and are shown to reduce web object transmission times with up to 51% and provide 45% faster communication for interactive applications, compared with MPTCP's default scheduler

A Framework for Analyzing Fog-Cloud Computing Cooperation Applied to Information Processing of UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a relatively new technology. Their application can often involve complex and unseen problems. For instance, they can work in a cooperative-based environment under the supervision of a ground station to speed up critical decision-making processes. However, the amount of information exchanged among the aircraft and ground station is limited by high distances, low bandwidth size, restricted processing capability, and energy constraints. These drawbacks restrain large-scale operations such as large area inspections. New distributed state-of-the-art processing architectures, such as fog computing, can improve latency, scalability, and efficiency to meet time constraints via data acquisition, processing, and storage at different levels. Under these amendments, this research work proposes a mathematical model to analyze distribution-based UAVs topologies and a fog-cloud computing framework for large-scale mission and search operations. The tests have successfully predicted latency and other operational constraints, allowing the analysis of fog-computing advantages over traditional cloud-computing architectures.Comment: Volume 2019, Article ID 7497924, 14 page

Dynamic and Dual Streaming Methods for H.264 Video and Parallel Performance Modeling

Traditional approaches to streaming H.264 video over a network typically rely on a single method of transport (i.e., reliable or unreliable) and/or use static values for parameters that can have a significant negative impact on the perceptual quality of the received video. This dissertation presents a dynamic method for wireless channel selection during video streaming, and explores the latency and QoE improvements yielded by the FDSP dual streaming method. The increased workload that results from these dynamic methods can lead to a counterproductive impairment of streaming performance, and therefore requires efficient use of the multiple cores typically present in both sender and receiver (or server and client). This dissertation therefore presents a performance cost model which can be used to guide the parallelization of specific types of client or server-side streaming components -- specifically, programs containing non-DOALL loops that have inter-iteration data dependences which constrain their parallelism

Towards Autonomous Computer Networks in Support of Critical Systems

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Definition and specification of connectivity and QoE/QoS management mechanisms – final report

This document summarizes the WP5 work throughout the project, describing its functional architecture and the solutions that implement the WP5 concepts on network control and orchestration. For this purpose, we defined 3 innovative controllers that embody the network slicing and multi tenancy: SDM-C, SDM-X and SDM-O. The functionalities of each block are detailed with the interfaces connecting them and validated through exemplary network processes, highlighting thus 5G NORMA innovations. All the proposed modules are designed to implement the functionality needed to provide the challenging KPIs required by future 5G networks while keeping the largest possible compatibility with the state of the art

Scalable Video Streaming with Prioritised Network Coding on End-System Overlays

PhDDistribution over the internet is destined to become a standard approach for live broadcasting of TV or events of nation-wide interest. The demand for high-quality live video with personal requirements is destined to grow exponentially over the next few years. Endsystem multicast is a desirable option for relieving the content server from bandwidth bottlenecks and computational load by allowing decentralised allocation of resources to the users and distributed service management. Network coding provides innovative solutions for a multitude of issues related to multi-user content distribution, such as the coupon-collection problem, allocation and scheduling procedure. This thesis tackles the problem of streaming scalable video on end-system multicast overlays with prioritised push-based streaming. We analyse the characteristic arising from a random coding process as a linear channel operator, and present a novel error detection and correction system for error-resilient decoding, providing one of the first practical frameworks for Joint Source-Channel-Network coding. Our system outperforms both network error correction and traditional FEC coding when performed separately. We then present a content distribution system based on endsystem multicast. Our data exchange protocol makes use of network coding as a way to collaboratively deliver data to several peers. Prioritised streaming is performed by means of hierarchical network coding and a dynamic chunk selection for optimised rate allocation based on goodput statistics at application layer. We prove, by simulated experiments, the efficient allocation of resources for adaptive video delivery. Finally we describe the implementation of our coding system. We highlighting the use rateless coding properties, discuss the application in collaborative and distributed coding systems, and provide an optimised implementation of the decoding algorithm with advanced CPU instructions. We analyse computational load and packet loss protection via lab tests and simulations, complementing the overall analysis of the video streaming system in all its components

Livraison de contenus sur un réseau hybride satellite / terrestre

L’augmentation et le renforcement des usages d’Internet rend nécessaire l’évolution des réseaux existants. Cependant, on constate de fortes inégalités entre les zones urbaines, bien desservies et qui concentrent l’essentiel des investissements, et les zones rurales, mal desservies etdélaissées. Face à cette situation, les utilisateurs de ces zones se tournent vers d’autres moyensd’accès, et notamment vers les accès Internet par satellite. Cependant, ces derniers souffrentd’une limitation qui est le délai important induit par le temps de propagation du signal entre la terre et l’orbite géostationnaire. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à l’utilisation simultanée d’un réseau d’accès terrestre, caractérisé par un faible débit et un faible délai, et d’un réseau d’accès satellite, caractérisé par une forte latence et un débit plus important. D’autre part, les réseaux dediffusion de contenus ou CDNs, constitués d’un grand nombre de serveurs de cache, apportentune réponse à l’augmentation du trafic et des besoins en termes de latence et de débit.Cependant, localisés dans les réseaux de cœur, les caches restent éloignés des utilisateurs etn’atteignent pas les réseaux d’accès. Ainsi, les fournisseurs d’accès Internet (FAI) se sontintéressés au déploiement de ces serveurs au sein de leur propre réseau, que l’on appelle alorsTelCo CDN. La diffusion des contenus nécessite idéalement l’interconnexion des opérateurs CDNavec les TelCo CDNs, permettant ainsi la délégation de la diffusion à ces derniers. Ils sont alorsen mesure d’optimiser la diffusion des contenus sur leur réseau dont ils ont une meilleureconnaissance. Ainsi, nous nous intéresserons à l’optimisation de la livraison de contenus sur unréseau hybride satellite / terrestre intégré à une chaîne de livraison CDN. Nous nous attacheronsdans un premier temps à décrire une architecture permettant, grâce à l’interconnexion de CDNs,de prendre en charge la diffusion des contenus sur le réseau hybride. Dans un second temps,nous étudierons l’intérêt de la connaissance des informations apportées par le contexte CDN pour le routage sur une telle architecture. Dans ce cadre, nous proposerons un mécanisme de routage fondé sur la taille des contenus. Finalement, nous montrerons la supériorité de notre approche sur l’utilisation du protocole de transport multichemin MP-TC