521 research outputs found
vSkyConf: Cloud-assisted Multi-party Mobile Video Conferencing
As an important application in the busy world today, mobile video
conferencing facilitates virtual face-to-face communication with friends,
families and colleagues, via their mobile devices on the move. However, how to
provision high-quality, multi-party video conferencing experiences over mobile
devices is still an open challenge. The fundamental reason behind is the lack
of computation and communication capacities on the mobile devices, to scale to
large conferencing sessions. In this paper, we present vSkyConf, a
cloud-assisted mobile video conferencing system to fundamentally improve the
quality and scale of multi-party mobile video conferencing. By novelly
employing a surrogate virtual machine in the cloud for each mobile user, we
allow fully scalable communication among the conference participants via their
surrogates, rather than directly. The surrogates exchange conferencing streams
among each other, transcode the streams to the most appropriate bit rates, and
buffer the streams for the most efficient delivery to the mobile recipients. A
fully decentralized, optimal algorithm is designed to decide the best paths of
streams and the most suitable surrogates for video transcoding along the paths,
such that the limited bandwidth is fully utilized to deliver streams of the
highest possible quality to the mobile recipients. We also carefully tailor a
buffering mechanism on each surrogate to cooperate with optimal stream
distribution. We have implemented vSkyConf based on Amazon EC2 and verified the
excellent performance of our design, as compared to the widely adopted unicast
solutions.Comment: 10 page
A Linear Network Code Construction for General Integer Connections Based on the Constraint Satisfaction Problem
The problem of finding network codes for general connections is inherently
difficult in capacity constrained networks. Resource minimization for general
connections with network coding is further complicated. Existing methods for
identifying solutions mainly rely on highly restricted classes of network
codes, and are almost all centralized. In this paper, we introduce linear
network mixing coefficients for code constructions of general connections that
generalize random linear network coding (RLNC) for multicast connections. For
such code constructions, we pose the problem of cost minimization for the
subgraph involved in the coding solution and relate this minimization to a
path-based Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) and an edge-based CSP. While
CSPs are NP-complete in general, we present a path-based probabilistic
distributed algorithm and an edge-based probabilistic distributed algorithm
with almost sure convergence in finite time by applying Communication Free
Learning (CFL). Our approach allows fairly general coding across flows,
guarantees no greater cost than routing, and shows a possible distributed
implementation. Numerical results illustrate the performance improvement of our
approach over existing methods.Comment: submitted to TON (conference version published at IEEE GLOBECOM 2015
Precoding-Based Network Alignment For Three Unicast Sessions
We consider the problem of network coding across three unicast sessions over
a directed acyclic graph, where each sender and the receiver is connected to
the network via a single edge of unit capacity. We consider a network model in
which the middle of the network only performs random linear network coding, and
restrict our approaches to precoding-based linear schemes, where the senders
use precoding matrices to encode source symbols. We adapt a precoding-based
interference alignment technique, originally developed for the wireless
interference channel, to construct a precoding-based linear scheme, which we
refer to as as a {\em precoding-based network alignment scheme (PBNA)}. A
primary difference between this setting and the wireless interference channel
is that the network topology can introduce dependencies between elements of the
transfer matrix, which we refer to as coupling relations, and can potentially
affect the achievable rate of PBNA. We identify all possible such coupling
relations, and interpret these coupling relations in terms of network topology
and present polynomial-time algorithms to check the presence of these coupling
relations. Finally, we show that, depending on the coupling relations present
in the network, the optimal symmetric rate achieved by precoding-based linear
scheme can take only three possible values, all of which can be achieved by
PBNA.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1202.340
Network Coding in a Multicast Switch
We consider the problem of serving multicast flows in a crossbar switch. We
show that linear network coding across packets of a flow can sustain traffic
patterns that cannot be served if network coding were not allowed. Thus,
network coding leads to a larger rate region in a multicast crossbar switch. We
demonstrate a traffic pattern which requires a switch speedup if coding is not
allowed, whereas, with coding the speedup requirement is eliminated completely.
In addition to throughput benefits, coding simplifies the characterization of
the rate region. We give a graph-theoretic characterization of the rate region
with fanout splitting and intra-flow coding, in terms of the stable set
polytope of the 'enhanced conflict graph' of the traffic pattern. Such a
formulation is not known in the case of fanout splitting without coding. We
show that computing the offline schedule (i.e. using prior knowledge of the
flow arrival rates) can be reduced to certain graph coloring problems. Finally,
we propose online algorithms (i.e. using only the current queue occupancy
information) for multicast scheduling based on our graph-theoretic formulation.
In particular, we show that a maximum weighted stable set algorithm stabilizes
the queues for all rates within the rate region.Comment: 9 pages, submitted to IEEE INFOCOM 200
Performance Modelling and Optimisation of Multi-hop Networks
A major challenge in the design of large-scale networks is to predict and optimise the
total time and energy consumption required to deliver a packet from a source node to a
destination node. Examples of such complex networks include wireless ad hoc and sensor
networks which need to deal with the effects of node mobility, routing inaccuracies, higher
packet loss rates, limited or time-varying effective bandwidth, energy constraints, and the
computational limitations of the nodes. They also include more reliable communication
environments, such as wired networks, that are susceptible to random failures, security
threats and malicious behaviours which compromise their quality of service (QoS) guarantees.
In such networks, packets traverse a number of hops that cannot be determined
in advance and encounter non-homogeneous network conditions that have been largely
ignored in the literature. This thesis examines analytical properties of packet travel in
large networks and investigates the implications of some packet coding techniques on both
QoS and resource utilisation.
Specifically, we use a mixed jump and diffusion model to represent packet traversal
through large networks. The model accounts for network non-homogeneity regarding
routing and the loss rate that a packet experiences as it passes successive segments of a
source to destination route. A mixed analytical-numerical method is developed to compute
the average packet travel time and the energy it consumes. The model is able to capture
the effects of increased loss rate in areas remote from the source and destination, variable
rate of advancement towards destination over the route, as well as of defending against
malicious packets within a certain distance from the destination. We then consider sending
multiple coded packets that follow independent paths to the destination node so as to
mitigate the effects of losses and routing inaccuracies. We study a homogeneous medium
and obtain the time-dependent properties of the packet’s travel process, allowing us to
compare the merits and limitations of coding, both in terms of delivery times and energy
efficiency. Finally, we propose models that can assist in the analysis and optimisation
of the performance of inter-flow network coding (NC). We analyse two queueing models
for a router that carries out NC, in addition to its standard packet routing function. The
approach is extended to the study of multiple hops, which leads to an optimisation problem
that characterises the optimal time that packets should be held back in a router, waiting
for coding opportunities to arise, so that the total packet end-to-end delay is minimised
A Linear Network Code Construction for General Integer Connections Based on the Constraint Satisfaction Problem
The problem of finding network codes for general connections is inherently difficult. Resource minimization for general connections with network coding is further complicated. The existing solutions mainly rely on very restricted classes of network codes, and are almost all centralized. In this paper, we introduce linear network mixing coefficients for code constructions of general connections that generalize random linear network coding (RLNC) for multicast connections. For such code constructions, we pose the problem of cost minimization for the subgraph involved in the coding solution and relate this minimization to a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) which we show can be simplified to have a moderate number of constraints. While CSPs are NP-complete in general, we present a probabilistic distributed algorithm with almost sure convergence in finite time by applying Communication Free Learning (CFL). Our approach allows fairly general coding across flows, guarantees no greater cost than routing, and shows a possible distributed implementation
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