Collaboration and Multimedia Authoring on Mobile Devices

This paper introduces adaptation-aware editing and progressive update propagation, two novel mechanisms that enable authoring multimedia content and collaborative work on mobile devices. Adaptation-aware editing enables editing content that was adapted to reduce download time to the mobile device. Progressive update propagation reduces the time for propagating content generated at the mobile device by transmitting either a fraction of the modifications or transcoded versions thereof.With application-aware editing and progressive update propagation, an object present at a mobile device is characterized not only by a particular version, as in conventional replication, but also by a particular fidelity. We demonstrate that replication models can be extended to account for fidelity independently of the mechanisms used for concurrency control and consistency maintenance. As a result, the two techniques described in this paper can easily be added to any replication protocol, whether optimistic or pessimistic.We report on our experience implementing adaptation-aware editing and progressive update propagation. Experiments with two multimedia applications, an email reader and a presentation software package, show that both mechanisms can be added with modest programming effort and achieve substantial reductions in upload and download latencies

ElfStore: A Resilient Data Storage Service for Federated Edge and Fog Resources

Edge and fog computing have grown popular as IoT deployments become wide-spread. While application composition and scheduling on such resources are being explored, there exists a gap in a distributed data storage service on the edge and fog layer, instead depending solely on the cloud for data persistence. Such a service should reliably store and manage data on fog and edge devices, even in the presence of failures, and offer transparent discovery and access to data for use by edge computing applications. Here, we present Elfstore, a first-of-its-kind edge-local federated store for streams of data blocks. It uses reliable fog devices as a super-peer overlay to monitor the edge resources, offers federated metadata indexing using Bloom filters, locates data within 2-hops, and maintains approximate global statistics about the reliability and storage capacity of edges. Edges host the actual data blocks, and we use a unique differential replication scheme to select edges on which to replicate blocks, to guarantee a minimum reliability and to balance storage utilization. Our experiments on two IoT virtual deployments with 20 and 272 devices show that ElfStore has low overheads, is bound only by the network bandwidth, has scalable performance, and offers tunable resilience.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, To appear in IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS), Milan, Italy, 201

Wireless recording of the calls of Rousettus aegyptiacus and their reproduction using electrostatic transducers

Bats are capable of imaging their surroundings in great detail using echolocation. To apply similar methods to human engineering systems requires the capability to measure and recreate the signals used, and to understand the processing applied to returning echoes. In this work, the emitted and reflected echolocation signals of Rousettus aegyptiacus are recorded while the bat is in flight, using a wireless sensor mounted on the bat. The sensor is designed to replicate the acoustic gain control which bats are known to use, applying a gain to returning echoes that is dependent on the incurred time delay. Employing this technique allows emitted and reflected echolocation calls, which have a wide dynamic range, to be recorded. The recorded echoes demonstrate the complexity of environment reconstruction using echolocation. The sensor is also used to make accurate recordings of the emitted calls, and these calls are recreated in the laboratory using custom-built wideband electrostatic transducers, allied with a spectral equalization technique. This technique is further demonstrated by recreating multi-harmonic bioinspired FM chirps. The ability to record and accurately synthesize echolocation calls enables the exploitation of biological signals in human engineering systems for sonar, materials characterization and imaging

A Privacy-Aware Distributed Storage and Replication Middleware for Heterogeneous Computing Platform

Cloud computing is an emerging research area that has drawn considerable interest in recent years. However, the current infrastructure raises significant concerns about how to protect users\u27 privacy, in part due to that users are storing their data in the cloud vendors\u27 servers. In this paper, we address this challenge by proposing and implementing a novel middleware, called Uno, which separates the storage of physical data and their associated metadata. In our design, users\u27 physical data are stored locally on those devices under a user\u27s full control, while their metadata can be uploaded to the commercial cloud. To ensure the reliability of users\u27 data, we develop a novel fine-grained file replication algorithm that exploits both data access patterns and device state patterns. Based on a quantitative analysis of the data set from Rice University, this algorithm replicates data intelligently in different time slots, so that it can not only significantly improve data availability, but also achieve a satisfactory performance on load balancing and storage diversification. We implement the Uno system on a heterogeneous testbed composed of both host servers and mobile devices, and demonstrate the programmability of Uno through implementation and evaluation of two sample applications, Uno@Home and Uno@Sense

Mobile Databases: a Selection of Open Issues and Research Directions

International audienceThis paper reports on the main results of a specific action on mobile databases conducted by CNRS in France from October 2001 to December 2002. The objective of this action was to review the state of progress in mobile databases and identify major research directions for the French database community. Rather than provide a survey of all important issues in mobile databases, this paper gives an outline of the directions in which the action participants are now engaged, namely: copy synchronization in disconnected computing, mobile transactions, database embedded in ultra-light devices, data confidentiality, P2P dissemination models and middleware adaptability

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Teenustele orienteeritud ja tõendite-teadlik mobiilne pilvearvutus

Arvutiteaduses on kaks kõige suuremat jõudu: mobiili- ja pilvearvutus. Kui pilvetehnoloogia pakub kasutajale keerukate ülesannete lahendamiseks salvestus- ning arvutusplatvormi, siis nutitelefon võimaldab lihtsamate ülesannete lahendamist mistahes asukohas ja mistahes ajal. Täpsemalt on mobiilseadmetel võimalik pilve võimalusi ära kasutades energiat säästa ning jagu saada kasvavast jõudluse ja ruumi vajadusest. Sellest tulenevalt on käesoleva töö peamiseks küsimuseks kuidas tuua pilveinfrastruktuur mobiilikasutajale lähemale? Antud töös uurisime kuidas mobiiltelefoni pilveteenust saab mobiilirakendustesse integreerida. Saime teada, et töö delegeerimine pilve eeldab mitmete pilve aspektide kaalumist ja integreerimist, nagu näiteks ressursimahukas töötlemine, asünkroonne suhtlus kliendiga, programmaatiline ressursside varustamine (Web APIs) ja pilvedevaheline kommunikatsioon. Nende puuduste ületamiseks lõime Mobiilse pilve vahevara Mobile Cloud Middleware (Mobile Cloud Middleware - MCM) raamistiku, mis kasutab deklaratiivset teenuste komponeerimist, et delegeerida töid mobiililt mitmetele pilvedele kasutades minimaalset andmeedastust. Teisest küljest on näidatud, et koodi teisaldamine on peamisi strateegiaid seadme energiatarbimise vähendamiseks ning jõudluse suurendamiseks. Sellegipoolest on koodi teisaldamisel miinuseid, mis takistavad selle laialdast kasutuselevõttu. Selles töös uurime lisaks, mis takistab koodi mahalaadimise kasutuselevõttu ja pakume lahendusena välja raamistiku EMCO, mis kogub seadmetelt infot koodi jooksutamise kohta erinevates kontekstides. Neid andmeid analüüsides teeb EMCO kindlaks, mis on sobivad tingimused koodi maha laadimiseks. Võrreldes kogutud andmeid, suudab EMCO järeldada, millal tuleks mahalaadimine teostada. EMCO modelleerib kogutud andmeid jaotuse määra järgi lokaalsete- ning pilvejuhtude korral. Neid jaotusi võrreldes tuletab EMCO täpsed atribuudid, mille korral mobiilirakendus peaks koodi maha laadima. Võrreldes EMCO-t teiste nüüdisaegsete mahalaadimisraamistikega, tõuseb EMCO efektiivsuse poolest esile. Lõpuks uurisime kuidas arvutuste maha laadimist ära kasutada, et täiustada kasutaja kogemust pideval mobiilirakenduse kasutamisel. Meie peamiseks motivatsiooniks, et sellist adaptiivset tööde täitmise kiirendamist pakkuda, on tagada kasutuskvaliteet (QoE), mis muutub vastavalt kasutajale, aidates seeläbi suurendada mobiilirakenduse eluiga.Mobile and cloud computing are two of the biggest forces in computer science. While the cloud provides to the user the ubiquitous computational and storage platform to process any complex tasks, the smartphone grants to the user the mobility features to process simple tasks, anytime and anywhere. Smartphones, driven by their need for processing power, storage space and energy saving are looking towards remote cloud infrastructure in order to solve these problems. As a result, the main research question of this work is how to bring the cloud infrastructure closer to the mobile user? In this thesis, we investigated how mobile cloud services can be integrated within the mobile apps. We found out that outsourcing a task to cloud requires to integrate and consider multiple aspects of the clouds, such as resource-intensive processing, asynchronous communication with the client, programmatically provisioning of resources (Web APIs) and cloud intercommunication. Hence, we proposed a Mobile Cloud Middleware (MCM) framework that uses declarative service composition to outsource tasks from the mobile to multiple clouds with minimal data transfer. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that computational offloading is a key strategy to extend the battery life of the device and improves the performance of the mobile apps. We also investigated the issues that prevent the adoption of computational offloading, and proposed a framework, namely Evidence-aware Mobile Computational Offloading (EMCO), which uses a community of devices to capture all the possible context of code execution as evidence. By analyzing the evidence, EMCO aims to determine the suitable conditions to offload. EMCO models the evidence in terms of distributions rates for both local and remote cases. By comparing those distributions, EMCO infers the right properties to offload. EMCO shows to be more effective in comparison with other computational offloading frameworks explored in the state of the art. Finally, we investigated how computational offloading can be utilized to enhance the perception that the user has towards an app. Our main motivation behind accelerating the perception at multiple response time levels is to provide adaptive quality-of-experience (QoE), which can be used as mean of engagement strategy that increases the lifetime of a mobile app