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

An Enhanced QoS Provisioning Approach for Video Streams using Cross Layer Design in IEEE 802.16

Wimax networks are increasingly deployed for commercial use because of its high bandwidth. This has necessitated application level changes in QoS provisioning techniques. In this paper, we propose an efficient method at the application layer of the wimax architecture. The video stream is partitioned at the application layer into I, P and B frames. Frames corrupted at receiver are detected using negative acknowledgements received from the physical layer. Probability of Byte Loss (BL) is calculated at physical layer which is used to calculate the redundant data. Redundant data is communicated from PHY layer to application layer via link layer using cross-layer signalling mechanism. Redundant data is piggybacked into the subsequent frame and sent only if BL is less than 0.2. This technique has improved the throughput of the network considerably which is evident from the performance analysis

Quality of service differentiation for multimedia delivery in wireless LANs

Delivering multimedia content to heterogeneous devices over a variable networking environment while maintaining high quality levels involves many technical challenges. The research reported in this thesis presents a solution for Quality of Service (QoS)-based service differentiation when delivering multimedia content over the wireless LANs. This thesis has three major contributions outlined below: 1. A Model-based Bandwidth Estimation algorithm (MBE), which estimates the available bandwidth based on novel TCP and UDP throughput models over IEEE 802.11 WLANs. MBE has been modelled, implemented, and tested through simulations and real life testing. In comparison with other bandwidth estimation techniques, MBE shows better performance in terms of error rate, overhead, and loss. 2. An intelligent Prioritized Adaptive Scheme (iPAS), which provides QoS service differentiation for multimedia delivery in wireless networks. iPAS assigns dynamic priorities to various streams and determines their bandwidth share by employing a probabilistic approach-which makes use of stereotypes. The total bandwidth to be allocated is estimated using MBE. The priority level of individual stream is variable and dependent on stream-related characteristics and delivery QoS parameters. iPAS can be deployed seamlessly over the original IEEE 802.11 protocols and can be included in the IEEE 802.21 framework in order to optimize the control signal communication. iPAS has been modelled, implemented, and evaluated via simulations. The results demonstrate that iPAS achieves better performance than the equal channel access mechanism over IEEE 802.11 DCF and a service differentiation scheme on top of IEEE 802.11e EDCA, in terms of fairness, throughput, delay, loss, and estimated PSNR. Additionally, both objective and subjective video quality assessment have been performed using a prototype system. 3. A QoS-based Downlink/Uplink Fairness Scheme, which uses the stereotypes-based structure to balance the QoS parameters (i.e. throughput, delay, and loss) between downlink and uplink VoIP traffic. The proposed scheme has been modelled and tested through simulations. The results show that, in comparison with other downlink/uplink fairness-oriented solutions, the proposed scheme performs better in terms of VoIP capacity and fairness level between downlink and uplink traffic

Interoperability of GPON and WiMAX for network capacity enhancement and resilience

This paper was published in Journal of Optical Networking and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of OSA. The paper can be found at the following URL on the OSA website: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/JON/Issue.cfm. Systematic or multiple reproduction or distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law. Copyright Optical Society of America.The interoperability of standard WiMAX and GPON is shown to overcome the wireless spectrum congestion and provide resilience for GPON through the use of overlapping radio cells. The application of centralised control in the optical line terminal (OLT) and time division multiplexing for upstream transmission enables efficient dynamic bandwidth allocation for wireless users on a single wavelength as well as minimised optical beat interference at the optical receiver. The viability of bidirectional transmission of multiple un-coded IEEE802.16d channels by means of a single radio frequency (RF) subcarrier at transmission rates of 50 Mbits/s and 15 Mbits/s downstream and upstream respectively for distances of up to 21 km of integrated GPON and WiMAX micro-cell links is demonstrated.Peer reviewe