Developing a Solution for Multimedia Home Networking

In recent years, the rapid development of electronics and computer science has enabled home networking devices to become more affordable and more powerful. Several widely used multimedia-streaming solutions have become available in the market. However, as a result of their different technical designs, these standards naturally experience serious compatibility issues. Thus, end users can have several multimedia devices, with each one using a distinctive, unique protocol, making it challenging or even impossible sometimes to share media between those devices. These compatibility issues have motivated the need to determine the technological features common to the existing multimedia-streaming standards and to develop a more easy-to-use multimedia home networking solution. This thesis compares the modern solutions for multimedia home networking (MHN), including AirPlay, Miracast, Chromecast, and especially the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) standard due to its wide adoption. By conducting research on the features and capabilities of these existing solutions, a suitable mobile solution for MHN, which takes advantage of AirPlay, Discovery and Launch (DIAL), and DLNA, is proposed for the Android platform. The corresponding system architectures, features, and analysis methodologies are also analyzed to demonstrate the competitiveness of this application. In terms of practical contribution, an online channel proxy was integrated to the application to fulfill the target of streaming online channels, such as YouTube. By implementing this online channel proxy, home networking and Internet resources can be effectively connected. Since its first release on the Google Play Store, the application received over one million downloads from 225 countries. According to the statistics, this solution has proved to be competitive and successful. In addition, this thesis discusses possible further development of this solution, and the future trends of multimedia home networking

Remote service usage through SIP with multimedia access as a use case

The IP Multimedia Subsystem is under deployment, as an IP-based service control and access infrastructure, but how it interconnects with residential appliances is currently unclear. With IMS access for the residential appliances they can be used as both service consumers and service providers. In this paper we present a protocol which allows residential services to be remotely invoked, through the IMS, and consumed in a different network, along with a prototype implementation and early results. With our protocol services of two distinct service protocol systems can cooperate

OMUS : an optimized multimedia service for the home environment

Media content in home environments is often scattered across multiple devices in the home network. As both the available multimedia devices in the home (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, game consoles, etc.) and the available content (video and audio) is increasing, interconnecting desired content with available devices is becoming harder and home users are experiencing difficulties in selecting interesting content for their current context. In this paper, we start with an analysis of the home environment by means of a user study. Information handling problems are identified and requirements for a home information system formulated. To meet these requirements we propose the OMUS home information system which includes an optimized content aggregation framework, a hybrid group-based contextual recommender system, and an overall web-based user interface making both content and recommendations available for all devices across the home network. For the group recommendations we introduced distinct weights for each user and showed that by varying the weights, the coverage (i.e., items that can be returned by the recommender) considerably increases. Also the addition of genre filter functionality was proven to further boost the coverage. The OMUS system was evaluated by means of focus groups and by qualitative and quantitative performance assessment of individual parts of the system. The modularity of internal components and limited imposed hardware requirements implies flexibility as to how the OMUS system can be deployed (ranging from e.g., embedded in hardware devices or more software services based)

Remote service discovery and control for ubiquitous service environments in next-generation networks

Doktorgradsavhandling i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi, Universitetet i Agder, Grimstad, 201

Remote service discovery and control for ubiquitous service environments in next-generation networks

Doktorgradsavhandling i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi, Universitetet i Agder, Grimstad, 201

Bridging ROS for Heterogeneous Integration in Mobile Robot Systems

We investigate the difficulty of integrating disparate, heterogeneous systems which have not been designed to work together. Such difficulties may arise from differences in communication protocols or data formats, making an in- tegration effort largely manual and labor intensive. The investigation is done in the context of integrating two different robot systems, one mobile platform running ROS (Robot Operating System) and one stationary two-armed ABB robot. The thesis consists of two parts. First, existing solutions to this problem (or parts of it) are examined and evaluated for their applicability. After no suitable solution is found, a tool is then created which solves the problem of integrating non-ROS compatible devices with a ROS system. The presented tool is a program that generates modular bridging nodes between ROS and other systems. Finally, the tool proves its value in the integration of two different robots, where one system also receives some additional changes for practical reasons

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

Architectures réseaux pour le partage de contenus multimédias avec garantie de qualité de service

Le succès des services de partage de contenus multimédias sur internet témoigne de l'intérêt des utilisateurs à partager leurs expériences personnelles à travers des fichiers multimédias (photo, vidéo, musique). Les solutions actuelles sont basées essentiellement sur des serveurs web et souffrent d'un manque de QoS, de sécurité et de confidentialité. Plusieurs travaux de recherche ont été menés pour proposer des architectures réseaux d'accès à distance pour de tels services. Ils sont soit trop complexes pour être utilisés par des services dédiés au grand public, soit inadaptés au contexte de partage de contenus. Dans cette thèse nous présentons un système de mise en relation réseau entre équipements distants pour permettre l'échange de contenus multimédias, ceci en garantissant à la fois la sécurité, la confidentialité et la qualité de service. Étant donné que ces contenus sont gourmands en ressources réseaux, le système proposera une garantie de QoS de bout en bout pour les sessions établies. Il offrira également une sécurisation de la mise en relation et des échanges. Nous avons défini une architecture générique de notre système. Ensuite, nous avons proposé deux déclinaisons techniques, leur conception et leur implémentation, une première utilisant le Framework IMS (IP Multimédia Subsystem) et une deuxième adaptée au déploiement sur internet. Le système conçu constitue la brique réseau du service de partage de contenus à distance étudié dans le cadre du projet européen Feel@Home (" Full Extended Experience of living at Home ").The success of multimedia content sharing services on the Internet attests the users' interest to share their personal experiences through media files (photo, video, music). Current solutions are mainly based on web servers and suffer from a serious lack of security and privacy. Several research studies have been conducted to provide network remote access architectures for this service. They are either very complicated to use by services dedicated to the public, or inappropriate for the context of content sharing. This thesis presents a set of architectures and systems for network session establishment between remote devices to exchange multimedia content, which guarantees security, confidentiality and QoS. As the multimedia contents can be greedy in network resources, the system will guaranteed an end to end QoS for session established. It will also secure the session establishment and content exchange. We have defined two generic architectures for such a system. Then we have proposed two technical realizations for these architectures, one using the Framework IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and a second one adapted to the deployment on the Internet. Our system was integrated to the remote content sharing service studied in the european project Feel@Home ("Full Extended Experience of Living at Home")

Carbook: A Platform for Mobile Automotive Services

Wireless mobile technologies have triggered a rapid development of secondary network technologies. One such prominent field of technology is interoperability for consumer devices. This field is mostly based on XML and Web Services and it includes technologies such as Universal Plug-and-Play, open media container formats, open codecs and Rich Internet Application technologies for mobile devices. Automotive field has been relatively slow and conservative in embracing these new Internet technologies. This is about to change as European Union and other substantial players are pressing forward with the safety and environmental technologies in cars. These technologies depend heavily on wireless Internet connectivity. As part of this thesis work, I have played a central role in defining the core concept of a distributed framework for mobile automotive services, Carbook System. I have also outlined the first phase of a shared research environment, Carlab, for these kinds of services. Carlab is used to demonstrate different technologies in accordance to Elektrobit’s vision for the future automotive Internet services. Carbook System will be implemented incrementally jointly with the continuation of the Carlab implementation. In this master of science thesis I have mapped and evaluated the essential technologies and created a preliminary outline for Carbook System and a set of services. The first phase Carlab network topology and emulation of different domains in Carbook System are also drafted in this thesis work