148 research outputs found
Flow Level QoE of Video Streaming in Wireless Networks
The Quality of Experience (QoE) of streaming service is often degraded by
frequent playback interruptions. To mitigate the interruptions, the media
player prefetches streaming contents before starting playback, at a cost of
delay. We study the QoE of streaming from the perspective of flow dynamics.
First, a framework is developed for QoE when streaming users join the network
randomly and leave after downloading completion. We compute the distribution of
prefetching delay using partial differential equations (PDEs), and the
probability generating function of playout buffer starvations using ordinary
differential equations (ODEs) for CBR streaming. Second, we extend our
framework to characterize the throughput variation caused by opportunistic
scheduling at the base station, and the playback variation of VBR streaming.
Our study reveals that the flow dynamics is the fundamental reason of playback
starvation. The QoE of streaming service is dominated by the first moments such
as the average throughput of opportunistic scheduling and the mean playback
rate. While the variances of throughput and playback rate have very limited
impact on starvation behavior.Comment: 14 page
Scalable on-demand streaming of stored complex multimedia
Previous research has developed a number of efficient protocols for streaming popular multimedia files on-demand to potentially large
numbers of concurrent clients. These protocols can achieve server bandwidth usage that grows much slower than linearly with the file request rate, and with the inverse of client start-up delay.
This hesis makes the following three main contributions to the design and performance evaluation of such protocols.
The first contribution is an investigation of the network bandwidth requirements for scalable on-demand streaming. The results suggest that the minimum required network bandwidth for scalable on-demand streaming typically scales as K/ln(K) as the number of client sites K increases for fixed request rate per client site, and as ln(N/(ND+1)) as the total file request rate N increases or client start-up delay D decreases, for a fixed number of sites. Multicast delivery trees configured to minimize network bandwidth usage rather than latency are found to only modestly reduce the minimum required network bandwidth. Furthermore, it is possible to achieve close to the minimum possible network and server bandwidth usage simultaneously with practical scalable delivery protocols.
Second, the thesis addresses the problem of scalable on-demand streaming of a more complex type of media than is typically considered, namely variable bit rate (VBR) media. A lower bound on
the minimum required server bandwidth for scalable on-demand streaming
of VBR media is derived. The lower bound analysis motivates the design of a new immediate service protocol termed VBR bandwidth skimming (VBRBS) that uses constant bit rate streaming, when sufficient client storage space is available, yet fruitfully exploits the knowledge of a VBR profile.
Finally, the thesis proposes non-linear media containing parallel sequences of data frames, among which clients can dynamically select at designated branch points, and investigates the design and performance issues in scalable on-demand streaming of such media. Lower bounds on the minimum required server bandwidth for various non-linear media scalable on-demand streaming approaches are derived, practical non-linear media scalable delivery protocols are developed, and, as a proof-of-concept, a simple scalable delivery
protocol is implemented in a non-linear media streaming prototype system
Multipath streaming: fundamental limits and efficient algorithms
We investigate streaming over multiple links. A file is split into small
units called chunks that may be requested on the various links according to
some policy, and received after some random delay. After a start-up time called
pre-buffering time, received chunks are played at a fixed speed. There is
starvation if the chunk to be played has not yet arrived. We provide lower
bounds (fundamental limits) on the starvation probability of any policy. We
further propose simple, order-optimal policies that require no feedback. For
general delay distributions, we provide tractable upper bounds for the
starvation probability of the proposed policies, allowing to select the
pre-buffering time appropriately. We specialize our results to: (i) links that
employ CSMA or opportunistic scheduling at the packet level, (ii) links shared
with a primary user (iii) links that use fair rate sharing at the flow level.
We consider a generic model so that our results give insight into the design
and performance of media streaming over (a) wired networks with several paths
between the source and destination, (b) wireless networks featuring spectrum
aggregation and (c) multi-homed wireless networks.Comment: 24 page
Evaluation of unidirectional background push content download services for the delivery of television programs
Este trabajo de tesis presenta los servicios de descarga de contenido en modo push como un
mecanismo eficiente para el envÃo de contenido de televisión pre-producido sobre redes de
difusión. Hoy en dÃa, los operadores de red dedican una cantidad considerable de recursos
de red a la entrega en vivo de contenido televisivo, tanto sobre redes de difusión como
sobre conexiones unidireccionales. Esta oferta de servicios responde únicamente a
requisitos comerciales: disponer de los contenidos televisivos en cualquier momento y
lugar. Sin embargo, desde un punto de vista estrictamente académico, el envÃo en vivo es
únicamente un requerimiento para el contenido en vivo, no para contenidos que ya han sido
producidos con anterioridad a su emisión. Más aún, la difusión es solo eficiente cuando el
contenido es suficientemente popular.
Los servicios bajo estudio en esta tesis utilizan capacidad residual en redes de difusión para
enviar contenido pre-producido para que se almacene en los equipos de usuario. La
propuesta se justifica únicamente por su eficiencia. Por un lado, genera valor de recursos de
red que no se aprovecharÃan de otra manera. Por otro lado, realiza la entrega de contenidos
pre-producidos y populares de la manera más eficiente: sobre servicios de descarga de
contenidos en difusión.
Los resultados incluyen modelos para la popularidad y la duración de contenidos, valiosos
para cualquier trabajo de investigación basados en la entrega de contenidos televisivos.
Además, la tesis evalúa la capacidad residual disponible en redes de difusión, por medio de
estudios empÃricos. Después, estos resultados son utilizados en simulaciones que evalúan
las prestaciones de los servicios propuestos en escenarios diferentes y para aplicaciones
diferentes. La evaluación demuestra que este tipo de servicios son un recurso muy útil para
la entrega de contenido televisivo.This thesis dissertation presents background push Content Download Services as an
efficient mechanism to deliver pre-produced television content through existing broadcast
networks. Nowadays, network operators dedicate a considerable amount of network
resources to live streaming live, through both broadcast and unicast connections. This
service offering responds solely to commercial requirements: Content must be available
anytime and anywhere. However, from a strictly academic point of view, live streaming is
only a requirement for live content and not for pre-produced content. Moreover,
broadcasting is only efficient when the content is sufficiently popular.
The services under study in this thesis use residual capacity in broadcast networks to push
popular, pre-produced content to storage capacity in customer premises equipment. The
proposal responds only to efficiency requirements. On one hand, it creates value from
network resources otherwise unused. On the other hand, it delivers popular pre-produced
content in the most efficient way: through broadcast download services.
The results include models for the popularity and the duration of television content,
valuable for any research work dealing with file-based delivery of television content. Later,
the thesis evaluates the residual capacity available in broadcast networks through empirical
studies. These results are used in simulations to evaluate the performance of background
push content download services in different scenarios and for different applications. The
evaluation proves that this kind of services can become a great asset for the delivery of
television contentFraile Gil, F. (2013). Evaluation of unidirectional background push content download services for the delivery of television programs [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/31656TESI
Dynamic bandwidth allocation in ATM networks
Includes bibliographical references.This thesis investigates bandwidth allocation methodologies to transport new emerging bursty traffic types in ATM networks. However, existing ATM traffic management solutions are not readily able to handle the inevitable problem of congestion as result of the bursty traffic from the new emerging services. This research basically addresses bandwidth allocation issues for bursty traffic by proposing and exploring the concept of dynamic bandwidth allocation and comparing it to the traditional static bandwidth allocation schemes
On the trade-off between quality of experience and energy efficiency in a heterogeneous cellular network
Two important issues in the current mobile cellular networks are: Firstly, the traffic on the internet has shifted from the file downloads to the video and audio streaming, secondly, the energy efficiency of cellular networks is a major concern. Particularly, the ever-increasing number of users with the exponential growth of high-data-rate traffic demand creates new challenges for wireless access providers. On the one hand, service providers want to satisfy the growing mobile data traffic demands but on the other hand, they try to reduce the operational costs and carbon emissions by decreasing the energy consumption. In this work, we explicitly quantify the tradeoff between quality of experience (QoE) and energy efficiency in a heterogeneous cellular network. We investigate an optimal resource on-off switching framework that minimizes the energy consumption of a heterogeneous cellular network while satisfying a desired level of quality of user experience. Considering an ON/OFF bursty arrival process, we introduce recursive equations to obtain the buffer starvation probability, as a QoE metric, of a mobile device (MD) for streaming services. The MD is in the coverage area of a femtocell base station (FBS) which is implemented at the cell edge of a macrocell base station (MBS). The buffer starvation event occurs whenever the mobile device’s buffer gets empty, and after each such event, the media player of the MD restarts the service after a certain amount of packets are prefetched (start-up or initial buffering delay). Our results have the potential to reduce carbon emissions of cellular networks by reducing the energy consumption throughout the network, while guaranteeing a target starvation probability to mobile users
Cross-layer optimisation of quality of experience for video traffic
Realtime video traffic is currently the dominant network traffic and is set to increase in volume for the foreseeable future. As this traffic is bursty, providing
perceptually good video quality is a challenging task. Bursty traffic refers to inconsistency of the video traffic level. It is at high level sometimes while is
at low level at some other times. Many video traffic measurement algorithms have been proposed for measurement-based admission control. Despite all of this effort, there is no entirely satisfactory admission algorithm for variable rate flows. Furthermore, video frames are subjected to loss and delay which cause quality
degradation when sent without reacting to network congestion. The perceived Quality of Experience (QoE)-number of sessions trade-off can be optimised by
exploiting the bursty nature of video traffic.
This study introduces a cross-layer QoE-aware optimisation architecture for video traffic. QoE is a measure of the user's perception of the quality of a network service. The architecture addresses the problem of QoE degradation in a bottleneck network. It proposes that video sources at the application layer adapt their rate to the network environment by dynamically controlling their transmitted bit rate. Whereas the edge of the network protects the quality of active video sessions by controlling the acceptance of new sessions through a QoE-aware admission control. In particular, it seeks the most efficient way of accepting new video sessions and adapts sending rates to free up resources for more sessions whilst maintaining
the QoE of the current sessions.
As a pathway to the objective, the performance of the video
flows that react to the network load by adapting the sending rate was investigated. Although dynamic
rate adaptation enhances the video quality, accepting more sessions than a link can accommodate will degrade the QoE.
The video's instantaneous aggregate rate was compared to the average aggregate rate which is a calculated rate over a measurement time window. It was found that there is no substantial difference between the two rates except for a small number of video flows, long measurement window, or fast moving contents (such as sport), in which the average is smaller than the instantaneous rate. These scenarios do not always represent the reality.
The finding discussed above was the main motivation for proposing a novel video traffic measurement algorithm that is QoE-aware. The algorithm finds the upper limit of the video total rate that can exceed a specific link capacity without the QoE degradation of ongoing video sessions. When implemented in a QoE-aware admission control, the algorithm managed to maintain the QoE for a higher number of video session compared to the calculated rate-based admission controls such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard Pre-Congestion Notification (PCN)-based admission control. Subjective tests were conducted to involve human subjects in rating of the quality of videos delivered with the proposed measurement algorithm.
Mechanisms proposed for optimising the QoE of video traffic were surveyed in detail in this dissertation and the challenges of achieving this objective were discussed. Finally, the current rate adaptation capability of video applications was combined with the proposed QoE-aware admission control in a QoE-aware cross-layer architecture. The performance of the proposed architecture was evaluated
against the architecture in which video applications perform rate adaptation without being managed by the admission control component. The results showed that
our architecture optimises the mean Mean Opinion Score (MOS) and number of successful decoded video sessions without compromising the delay.
The algorithms proposed in this study were implemented and evaluated using Network Simulator-version 2 (NS-2), MATLAB, Evalvid and Evalvid-RA. These software tools were selected based on their use in similar studies and availability
at the university. Data obtained from the simulations was analysed with analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Cumulative Distribution Functions (CDF) for the
performance metrics were calculated.
The proposed architecture will contribute to the preparation for the massive growth of video traffic. The mathematical models of the proposed algorithms contribute to the research community
Power-Constrained Fuzzy Logic Control of Video Streaming over a Wireless Interconnect
Wireless communication of video, with Bluetooth as an example, represents a compromise between channel conditions, display and decode deadlines, and energy constraints. This paper proposes fuzzy logic control (FLC) of automatic repeat request (ARQ) as a way of reconciling these factors, with a 40% saving in power in the worst channel conditions from economizing on transmissions when channel errors occur. Whatever the channel conditions are, FLC is shown to outperform the default Bluetooth scheme and an alternative Bluetooth-adaptive ARQ scheme in terms of reduced packet loss and delay, as well as improved video quality
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