NoTube – making TV a medium for personalized interaction

In this paper, we introduce NoTube’s vision on deploying semantics in interactive TV context in order to contextualize distributed applications and lift them to a new level of service that provides context-dependent and personalized selection of TV content. Additionally, lifting content consumption from a single-user activity to a community-based experience in a connected multi-device environment is central to the project. Main research questions relate to (1) data integration and enrichment - how to achieve unified and simple access to dynamic, growing and distributed multimedia content of diverse formats? (2) user and context modeling - what is an appropriate framework for context modeling, incorporating task-, domain and device-specific viewpoints? (3) context-aware discovery of resources - how could rather fuzzy matchmaking between potentially infinite contexts and available media resources be achieved? (4) collaborative architecture for TV content personalization - how can the combined information about data, context and user be put at disposal of both content providers and end-users in the view of creating extremely personalized services under controlled privacy and security policies? Thus, with the grand challenge in mind - to put the TV viewer back in the driver's seat – we focus on TV content as a medium for personalized interaction between people based on a service architecture that caters for a variety of content metadata, delivery channels and rendering devices

Multidimensional model of estimated resource usage for multimedia NoC QoS

Multiprocessor systems are rapidly entering various high-performance computing segments, like multimedia processing. Instead of an increase in processor clock frequency, the new trend is enabling multiple cores in performing processing, e.g. dual or quadrapule CPUs in one subsystem. In this contribution, we address the problem of modeling the resource requirements of multimedia applications for a distributed computation on a multiprocessor system. This paper shows that the estimation of resource requirements based on input data enables the dynamic activation of tasks and run-time redistribution of application tasks. We also formally specify the optimal selection of the co-executed application with aim to provide the most optimal end-results of such streaming applications within one networks-on-chip (NoC) system. We present a new concept for system optimization which involves the major system parameters and resource usage. Experimental results are based on mapping an arbitrary-shaped MPEG-4 video decoder onto a multiprocessor NoC

Building distributed sensor network applications using BIP

International audienceThe exponential increase in the demands for the deployment of large-scale sensor networks, makes the efficient development of functional applications necessary. Nevertheless, the existence of scarce resources and the derived application complexity, impose significant constraints and requires high design expertise. Consequently, the probability of discovering design errors, once the application is implemented, is considerably high. To address these issues, there is a need for the availability of early-stage validation, performance evaluation and rapid prototyping techniques at design time. In this paper we present a novel approach for the co-design of mixed software/hardware applications for distributed sensor network systems. This approach uses BIP, a formal framework facilitating modeling, analysis and implementation of real-time embedded, heterogeneous systems. Our approach is illustrated through the modeling and deployment of a Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network (WMSN) application. We emphasize on its merits, notably validation of functional and non-functional requirements through statistical model-checking and automatic code generation for sensor network platforms

A dynamic petri net model for iterative and interactive distributed multimedia presentation

Object Composition Petri Nets (OCPN), Priority Petri Nets (P-Net), Dynamic OCPN (DOCPN) and Enhanced P-Nets (EP-Net) have extended the original Petri Net to achieve the modeling of media synchronization and asynchronous user interactions during multimedia playback. Dynamic Petri Net (DPN) has been conceptualized to tackle existing problems in these two areas of modeling distributed multimedia systems. DPN features dynamic modeling elements which allows iteration and hence is able to reduce graph sizes of synchronous playback models while allowing greater details to be shown. DPN also introduces asynchronous event handling techniques that are powerful and effective. DPN was used in the design and modeling of a multimedia orchestration tool which is a typical representation of an application that works in a distributed multimedia system

A Framework for Quality-Driven Delivery in Distributed Multimedia Systems

In this paper, we propose a framework for Quality-Driven Delivery (QDD) in distributed multimedia environments. Quality-driven delivery refers to the capacity of a system to deliver documents, or more generally objects, while considering the users expectations in terms of non-functional requirements. For this QDD framework, we propose a model-driven approach where we focus on QoS information modeling and transformation. QoS information models and meta-models are used during different QoS activities for mapping requirements to system constraints, for exchanging QoS information, for checking compatibility between QoS information and more generally for making QoS decisions. We also investigate which model transformation operators have to be implemented in order to support some QoS activities such as QoS mapping

Heterogeneous component interactions: Sensors integration into multimedia applications

Resource-constrained embedded and mobile devices are becoming increasingly common. Since few years, some mobile and ubiquitous devices such as wireless sensor, able to be aware of their physical environment, appeared. Such devices enable proposing applications which adapt to user's need according the context evolution. It implies the collaboration of sensors and software components which differ on their nature and their communication mechanisms. This paper proposes a unified component model in order to easily design applications based on software components and sensors without taking care of their nature. Then it presents a state of the art of communication problems linked to heterogeneous components and proposes an interaction mechanism which ensures information exchanges between wireless sensors and software components

Self-modifiable color petri nets for modeling user manipulation and network event handling

A Self-Modifiable Color Petri Net (SMCPN) which has multimedia synchronization capability and the ability to model user manipulation and network event (i.e. network congestion, etc.) handling is proposed in this paper. In SMCPN, there are two types of tokens: resource tokens representing resources to be presented and color tokens with two sub-types: one associated with some commands to modify the net mechanism in operation, another associated with a number to decide iteration times. Also introduced is a new type of resource token named reverse token that moves to the opposite direction of arcs. When user manipulation/network event occurs, color tokens associated with the corresponding interrupt handling commands will be injected into places that contain resource tokens. These commands are then executed to handle the user manipulation/network event. SMCPN has the desired general programmability in the following sense: 1) It allows handling of user manipulations or pre-specified events at any time while keeping the Petri net design simple and easy. 2) It allows the user to customize event handling beforehand. This means the system being modeled can handle not only commonly seen user interrupts (e.g. skip, reverse, freeze), the user is free to define new operations including network event handling. 3) It has the power to simulate self-modifying protocols. A simulator has been built to demonstrate the feasibility of SMCPN

Transport of video over partial order connections

A Partial Order and partial reliable Connection (POC) is an end-to-end transport connection authorized to deliver objects in an order that can differ from the transmitted one. Such a connection is also authorized to lose some objects. The POC concept is motivated by the fact that heterogeneous best-effort networks such as Internet are plagued by unordered delivery of packets and losses, which tax the performances of current applications and protocols. It has been shown, in several research works, that out of order delivery is able to alleviate (with respect to CO service) the use of end systems’ communication resources. In this paper, the efficiency of out-of-sequence delivery on MPEG video streams processing is studied. Firstly, the transport constraints (in terms of order and reliability) that can be relaxed by MPEG video decoders, for improving video transport, are detailed. Then, we analyze the performance gain induced by this approach in terms of blocking times and recovered errors. We demonstrate that POC connections fill not only the conceptual gap between TCP and UDP but also provide real performance improvements for the transport of multimedia streams such MPEG video