High performance video processing in cloud data centres

Mobile phones and affordable cameras are generating large amounts of video data. This data holds information regarding several activities and incidents. Video analytics systems have been introduced to extract valuable information from this data. However, most of these systems are expensive, require human supervision and are time consuming. The probability of extracting inaccurate information is also high due to human involvement. We have addressed these challenges by proposing a cloud based high performance video analytics platform. This platform attempts to minimize human intervention, reduce computation time and enables the processing of a large number of video streams. It achieves high performance by optimizing the occupancy of GPU resources in cloud and minimizing the data transfer by concurrently processing a large number of video streams. The proposed video processing platform is evaluated in three stages. The first evaluation was performed at the cloud level in order to evaluate the scalability of the platform. This evaluation includes fetching and distributing video streams and efficiently utilizing available resources within the cloud. The second valuation was performed at the individual cloud nodes. This evaluation includes measuring the occupancy level, effect of data transfer and the extent of concurrency achieved at each node. The third evaluation was performed at the frame level in order to determine the performance of object recognition algorithms. To measure this, compute intensive tasks of the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) algorithm have been ported on to the GPU resources. The platform proved to be very scalable with high throughput and performance when tested on a large number of video streams with increasing number of nodes

High performance video processing in cloud data centres

Mobile phones and affordable cameras are generating large amounts of video data. This data holds information regarding several activities and incidents. Video analytics systems have been introduced to extract valuable information from this data. However, most of these systems are expensive, require human supervision and are time consuming. The probability of extracting inaccurate information is also high due to human involvement. We have addressed these challenges by proposing a cloud based high performance video analytics platform. This platform attempts to minimize human intervention, reduce computation time and enables the processing of a large number of video streams. It achieves high performance by optimizing the occupancy of GPU resources in cloud and minimizing the data transfer by concurrently processing a large number of video streams. The proposed video processing platform is evaluated in three stages. The first evaluation was performed at the cloud level in order to evaluate the scalability of the platform. This evaluation includes fetching and distributing video streams and efficiently utilizing available resources within the cloud. The second valuation was performed at the individual cloud nodes. This evaluation includes measuring the occupancy level, effect of data transfer and the extent of concurrency achieved at each node. The third evaluation was performed at the frame level in order to determine the performance of object recognition algorithms. To measure this, compute intensive tasks of the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) algorithm have been ported on to the GPU resources. The platform proved to be very scalable with high throughput and performance when tested on a large number of video streams with increasing number of nodes

Introducing mobile edge computing capabilities through distributed 5G Cloud Enabled Small Cells

Current trends in broadband mobile networks are addressed towards the placement of different capabilities at the edge of the mobile network in a centralised way. On one hand, the split of the eNB between baseband processing units and remote radio headers makes it possible to process some of the protocols in centralised premises, likely with virtualised resources. On the other hand, mobile edge computing makes use of processing and storage capabilities close to the air interface in order to deploy optimised services with minimum delay. The confluence of both trends is a hot topic in the definition of future 5G networks. The full centralisation of both technologies in cloud data centres imposes stringent requirements to the fronthaul connections in terms of throughput and latency. Therefore, all those cells with limited network access would not be able to offer these types of services. This paper proposes a solution for these cases, based on the placement of processing and storage capabilities close to the remote units, which is especially well suited for the deployment of clusters of small cells. The proposed cloud-enabled small cells include a highly efficient microserver with a limited set of virtualised resources offered to the cluster of small cells. As a result, a light data centre is created and commonly used for deploying centralised eNB and mobile edge computing functionalities. The paper covers the proposed architecture, with special focus on the integration of both aspects, and possible scenarios of application.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Reporting an Experience on Design and Implementation of e-Health Systems on Azure Cloud

Electronic Health (e-Health) technology has brought the world with significant transformation from traditional paper-based medical practice to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based systems for automatic management (storage, processing, and archiving) of information. Traditionally e-Health systems have been designed to operate within stovepipes on dedicated networks, physical computers, and locally managed software platforms that make it susceptible to many serious limitations including: 1) lack of on-demand scalability during critical situations; 2) high administrative overheads and costs; and 3) in-efficient resource utilization and energy consumption due to lack of automation. In this paper, we present an approach to migrate the ICT systems in the e-Health sector from traditional in-house Client/Server (C/S) architecture to the virtualised cloud computing environment. To this end, we developed two cloud-based e-Health applications (Medical Practice Management System and Telemedicine Practice System) for demonstrating how cloud services can be leveraged for developing and deploying such applications. The Windows Azure cloud computing platform is selected as an example public cloud platform for our study. We conducted several performance evaluation experiments to understand the Quality Service (QoS) tradeoffs of our applications under variable workload on Azure.Comment: Submitted to third IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing (CGC 2013

Energy challenges for ICT

The energy consumption from the expanding use of information and communications technology (ICT) is unsustainable with present drivers, and it will impact heavily on the future climate change. However, ICT devices have the potential to contribute signi - cantly to the reduction of CO2 emission and enhance resource e ciency in other sectors, e.g., transportation (through intelligent transportation and advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving vehicles), heating (through smart building control), and manu- facturing (through digital automation based on smart autonomous sensors). To address the energy sustainability of ICT and capture the full potential of ICT in resource e - ciency, a multidisciplinary ICT-energy community needs to be brought together cover- ing devices, microarchitectures, ultra large-scale integration (ULSI), high-performance computing (HPC), energy harvesting, energy storage, system design, embedded sys- tems, e cient electronics, static analysis, and computation. In this chapter, we introduce challenges and opportunities in this emerging eld and a common framework to strive towards energy-sustainable ICT

Remotely hosted services and 'cloud computing'

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring potential of cloud computing to address educational issue

TechNews digests: Jan - Nov 2009

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month