Rate Control State-of-the-art Survey

The majority of Internet traffic use Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) as the transport level protocol. It provides a reliable ordered byte stream for the applications. However, applications such as live video streaming place an emphasis on timeliness over reliability. Also a smooth sending rate can be desirable over sharp changes in the sending rate. For these applications TCP is not necessarily suitable. Rate control attempts to address the demands of these applications. An important design feature in all rate control mechanisms is TCP friendliness. We should not negatively impact TCP performance since it is still the dominant protocol. Rate Control mechanisms are classified into two different mechanisms: window-based mechanisms and rate-based mechanisms. Window-based mechanisms increase their sending rate after a successful transfer of a window of packets similar to TCP. They typically decrease their sending rate sharply after a packet loss. Rate-based solutions control their sending rate in some other way. A large subset of rate-based solutions are called equation-based solutions. Equation-based solutions have a control equation which provides an allowed sending rate. Typically these rate-based solutions react slower to both packet losses and increases in available bandwidth making their sending rate smoother than that of window-based solutions. This report contains a survey of rate control mechanisms and a discussion of their relative strengths and weaknesses. A section is dedicated to a discussion on the enhancements in wireless environments. Another topic in the report is bandwidth estimation. Bandwidth estimation is divided into capacity estimation and available bandwidth estimation. We describe techniques that enable the calculation of a fair sending rate that can be used to create novel rate control mechanisms.Peer reviewe

Seamless Multimedia Delivery Within a Heterogeneous Wireless Networks Environment: Are We There Yet?

The increasing popularity of live video streaming from mobile devices, such as Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, etc. pressurizes the network operators to increase the capacity of their networks. However, a simple increase in system capacity will not be enough without considering the provisioning of quality of experience (QoE) as the basis for network control, customer loyalty, and retention rate and thus increase in network operators revenue. As QoE is gaining strong momentum especially with increasing users' quality expectations, the focus is now on proposing innovative solutions to enable QoE when delivering video content over heterogeneous wireless networks. In this context, this paper presents an overview of multimedia delivery solutions, identifies the problems and provides a comprehensive classification of related state-of-the-art approaches following three key directions: 1) adaptation; 2) energy efficiency; and 3) multipath content delivery. Discussions, challenges, and open issues on the seamless multimedia provisioning faced by the current and next generation of wireless networks are also provided

Seamless multimedia delivery within a heterogeneous wireless networks environment: are we there yet?

The increasing popularity of live video streaming from mobile devices such as Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, etc. pressurises the network operators to increase the capacity of their networks. However, a simple increase in system capacity will not be enough without considering the provisioning of Quality of Experience (QoE) as the basis for network control, customer loyalty and retention rate and thus increase in network operators revenue. As QoE is gaining strong momentum especially with increasing users’ quality expectations, the focus is now on proposing innovative solutions to enable QoE when delivering video content over heterogeneous wireless networks. In this context, this paper presents an overview of multimedia delivery solutions, identifies the problems and provides a comprehensive classification of related state-of-the-art approaches following three key directions: adaptation, energy efficiency and multipath content delivery. Discussions, challenges and open issues on the seamless multimedia provisioning faced by the current and next generation of wireless networks are also provided

End to end architecture and mechanisms for mobile and wireless communications in the Internet

Architecture et mécanismes de bout en bout pour les communications mobiles et sans fil dans l'Internet. La gestion performante de la mobilité et l'amélioration des performances des couches basses sont deux enjeux fondamentaux dans le contexte des réseaux sans fil. Cette thèse apporte des solutions originales et innovantes qui visent à répondre à ces deux problématiques empêchant à ce jour d'offrir des possibilités de communication performantes et sans couture aux usagers mobiles accédant à l'Internet via des réseaux d'accès locaux sans fil (WLAN). Ces solutions se distinguent en particulier par l'impact minimum qu'elles ont sur les protocoles standards de l'Internet (niveaux transport et réseau) ou de l'IEEE (niveaux physique et liaison de données). S'inscrivant dans les paradigmes de "bout en bout" et "cross-layer", notre architecture permet d'offrir des solutions efficaces pour la gestion de la mobilité : gestion de la localisation et des handover en particulier. En outre, nous montrons que notre approche permet également d'améliorer l'efficacité des transmissions ainsi que de résoudre efficacement plusieurs syndromes identifiés au sein de 802.11 tels que les anomalies de performance, l'iniquité entre les flux et l'absence de contrôle de débit entre la couche MAC et les couches supérieures. Cette thèse résout ces problèmes en combinant des modèles analytiques, des simulations et de réelles expérimentations. Ces mécanismes adaptatifs ont été développés et intégrés dans une architecture de communication qui fournit des services de communication à haute performance pour réseaux sans fils tels que WIFI et WIMAX. ABSTRACT : Wireless networks, because of the potential pervasive and mobile communication services they offer, are becoming the dominant Internet access networks. However, the legacy Internet protocols, still dominant at that time, have not been designed with mobility and wireless in mind. Therefore, numerous maladjustments and “defaults of impedance” can be observed when combining wireless physical and MAC layers with the traditional upper layers. This thesis proposes several solutions for a pacific coexistence between these communication layers that have been defined and designed independently. Reliable mobility management and Low layer performance enhancements are two main challenging issues in the context of wireless networks. Mobility management (which is mostly based on mobile IP architecture nowadays) aims to continuously assign and control the wireless connections of mobile nodes amongst a space of wireless access networks. Low layer performance enhancements mainly focus on the transmission efficiency such as higher rate, lower loss, interference avoidance. This thesis addresses these two important issues from an original and innovative approach that, conversely to the traditional contributions, entails a minimum impact on the legacy protocols and internet infrastructure. Following the “end to end” and “cross layer” paradigms, we address and offer efficient and light solutions to fast handover, location management and continuous connection support through a space of wireless networks. Moreover, we show that such an approach makes it possible to enhance transmission efficiency and solve efficiently several syndromes that plague the performances of current wireless networks such as performance anomaly, unfairness issues and maladjustment between MAC layer and upper layers. This thesis tackles these issues by combining analytical models, simulations and real experiments. The resulting mechanisms have been developed and integrated into adaptive mobility management communication architecture that delivers high performing communication services to mobile wireless systems, with a focus on WIFI and WIMAX access networks

User-centric power-friendly quality-based network selection strategy for heterogeneous wireless environments

The ‘Always Best Connected’ vision is built around the scenario of a mobile user seamlessly roaming within a multi-operator multi-technology multi-terminal multi-application multi-user environment supported by the next generation of wireless networks. In this heterogeneous environment, users equipped with multi-mode wireless mobile devices will access rich media services via one or more access networks. All these access networks may differ in terms of technology, coverage range, available bandwidth, operator, monetary cost, energy usage etc. In this context, there is a need for a smart network selection decision to be made, to choose the best available network option to cater for the user’s current application and requirements. The decision is a difficult one, especially given the number and dynamics of the possible input parameters. What parameters are used and how those parameters model the application requirements and user needs is important. Also, game theory approaches can be used to model and analyze the cooperative or competitive interaction between the rational decision makers involved, which are users, seeking to get good service quality at good value prices, and/or the network operators, trying to increase their revenue. This thesis presents the roadmap towards an ‘Always Best Connected’ environment. The proposed solution includes an Adapt-or-Handover solution which makes use of a Signal Strength-based Adaptive Multimedia Delivery mechanism (SAMMy) and a Power-Friendly Access Network Selection Strategy (PoFANS) in order to help the user in taking decisions, and to improve the energy efficiency at the end-user mobile device. A Reputation-based System is proposed, which models the user-network interaction as a repeated cooperative game following the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma game from Game Theory. It combines reputation-based systems, game theory and a network selection mechanism in order to create a reputation-based heterogeneous environment. In this environment, the users keep track of their individual history with the visited networks. Every time, a user connects to a network the user-network interaction game is played. The outcome of the game is a network reputation factor which reflects the network’s previous behavior in assuring service guarantees to the user. The network reputation factor will impact the decision taken by the user next time, when he/she will have to decide whether to connect or not to that specific network. The performance of the proposed solutions was evaluated through in-depth analysis and both simulation-based and experimental-oriented testing. The results clearly show improved performance of the proposed solutions in comparison with other similar state-of-the-art solutions. An energy consumption study for a Google Nexus One streaming adaptive multimedia was performed, and a comprehensive survey on related Game Theory research are provided as part of the work

Smart PIN: performance and cost-oriented context-aware personal information network

The next generation of networks will involve interconnection of heterogeneous individual networks such as WPAN, WLAN, WMAN and Cellular network, adopting the IP as common infrastructural protocol and providing virtually always-connected network. Furthermore, there are many devices which enable easy acquisition and storage of information as pictures, movies, emails, etc. Therefore, the information overload and divergent content’s characteristics make it difficult for users to handle their data in manual way. Consequently, there is a need for personalised automatic services which would enable data exchange across heterogeneous network and devices. To support these personalised services, user centric approaches for data delivery across the heterogeneous network are also required. In this context, this thesis proposes Smart PIN - a novel performance and cost-oriented context-aware Personal Information Network. Smart PIN's architecture is detailed including its network, service and management components. Within the service component, two novel schemes for efficient delivery of context and content data are proposed: Multimedia Data Replication Scheme (MDRS) and Quality-oriented Algorithm for Multiple-source Multimedia Delivery (QAMMD). MDRS supports efficient data accessibility among distributed devices using data replication which is based on a utility function and a minimum data set. QAMMD employs a buffer underflow avoidance scheme for streaming, which achieves high multimedia quality without content adaptation to network conditions. Simulation models for MDRS and QAMMD were built which are based on various heterogeneous network scenarios. Additionally a multiple-source streaming based on QAMMS was implemented as a prototype and tested in an emulated network environment. Comparative tests show that MDRS and QAMMD perform significantly better than other approaches