Multimedia Communication

Multimedia communication presents information in an interesting, creative way that helps many different types of learners internalize the data. Info graphics are a common example of multimedia communication. These large images are set up like posters and have text, statistics, graphs, charts and images that provide information. Visual learners who need these graphs, charts and images are able to get just as much from the info graph as learners who focus on numbers who, for instance, hone in on the statistics. Websites are also prime examples of multimedia communication. Websites can include all of the different types of media to present a single topic or idea, and they are interactive so that the user can easily find the information and navigate the pages. Many informative websites include videos that offer succinct, engaging clips

Voice Over Internet Protocol Based Communication Design (VoIP) With 3CXSystemPhone On Android Smartphone

TCP\IP protocol can be connected to various computer data networks in the world. This protocol increasingly exists and is needed so that many parties develop it to vote through this protocol. Voice Over Internet Protocol technology is the answer to that desire. This technology is able to convert analog voice (human voice) into data packets then through public internet data networks and private intranet data packets are passed, so that communication can occur. With VoIP communication costs can be reduced so that it can reduce investment costs and conversations (cost saving) or even up to 100% free. VoIP implementation can be done by designing a wireless VoIP network (cable) using 3CXSystemPhone software as a PBX. In this scientific work the software used is 3CXSystemPhone 11.0, where SIP is a VoIP server which is a freeware software, in its application only requires one PC server and several PC clients (2 for example) that are connected to each othe

Addressing Political Exclusion of Ethnic Minorities, IDP’s, and Refugees in the Eastern Neighbourhood

The quality of political inclusion of ethnic minorities1 in the Eastern Neighbourhood remains a significant challenge, despite institutions in place to promote the rights of national minorities and various programming designed to foster inclusion. This rapid review surveys donor, academic and NGO literature in this field. Literature on addressing the political exclusion of ethnic minorities is limited, with discussion of donor interventions even more sparse. The report thus draws on government initiatives; and on recommendations based on the country situation and international experience, which are not necessarily based on specific programming. There was greater information on Georgia and Moldova, than on Armenia (reflected in the sub-section country titles). In addition, there is limited discussion of programming to address the political exclusion of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees in the region. As such the report relies in part on general research and guidance on IDPs and refugees from a global perspective, including discussion of a few examples of initiatives outside of the Eastern Neighbourhood.Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO

Avaliação de controlo de sessões multicast em redes com contexto

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesOs utilizadores pretendem aceder, cada vez mais, a serviços multimédia com requisitos mais exigentes e personalizados. As limitações impostas pelos ambientes existentes (internet, 3G) para fornecer estes serviços levam à procura de melhores soluções, nomeadamente uma gestão eficaz das sessões multiparty. Neste tipo de soluções é normalmente utilizado o multicast, já que este permite reduzir os recursos utilizados, diminuindo o número de pacotes na rede. Contudo, o multicast não está consistente ao nível dos cenários de mobilidade, fundamentais nas redes de próxima geração. Actualmente existe uma vasta gama de tecnologias de acesso sem fios como WiFi, GPRS, UMTS e WiMAX. No futuro estas tecnologias diferentes complementar-se-ão convergindo numa infra-estrutura heterogénea capaz de fornecer um melhor serviço aos utilizadores, denominadas de redes 4G. A evolução dos terminais móveis também permitirá que estes se liguem simultaneamente a várias redes de acesso. Para uma melhor distribuição dos serviços dos utilizadores pelas redes de acesso disponíveis são necessários novos mecanismos de selecção. Uma nova selecção da rede baseada em informação de contexto (entidades e ambiente) tem tido grande relevo na comunidade científica. Assim, aplicações e rede reagem a alterações de contexto para uma melhor selecção da mesma. A dissertação apresentada encontra-se no âmbito do transporte multiparty com informação de contexto e reserva de recursos, permitindo a entrega do conteúdo de uma forma personalizada e com Qualidade de Serviço a vários utilizadores móveis, independentemente da tecnologia de acesso de cada um e da própria tecnologia da rede. Em suma, é utilizada uma arquitectura de rede baseada em informação de contexto e que reage eficazmente a alterações do mesmo. De forma a implementar a proposta apresentada recorreu-se à criação de várias entidades no simulador de redes NS-2. Os resultados foram obtidos usando diferentes cenários, avaliando a influência de cada parâmetro individualmente. Demonstrou-se que a arquitectura implementada permite suportar uma entrega dos conteúdos de uma maneira personalizada e independente da tecnologia utilizada. Obteve-se ainda uma boa gestão dos recursos da rede e uma melhoria na experiência percepcionada pelo utilizador através da selecção total da rede com base numa entidade de controlo central. A introdução do overlay de transporte multiparty melhora o comportamento geral da rede, minimizando as reconfigurações frequentes necessárias.Nowadays, more and more users want to access multimedia services with strong and personalized requirements. The limitations intrinsic to current environments (Internet and 3G) to provide this type of services motivate the research for an efficient management of multiparty sessions. The solution can also be based on multicast implementation, since it reduces resources utilization, decreasing the number of packets in the network. However, current multicast is not a strong solution in mobility scenarios, essential in next generation networks. Currently there is a wide range of wireless access technologies such as WiFi, GPRS, UMTS and WiMAX. In the future, these different technologies will converge in a complementary manner forming a heterogeneous infrastructure able to offer a better service to its users, usually named 4G. The evolution of mobile terminals will also allow them to connect simultaneously to several access networks. In order to a better distribution of the users services throughout available access networks, new selection mechanisms are required. A new network selection based on context information (entities and environments) is having a relevant role in scientific community. So, applications and networks react according to context changes, improving network selection. This Thesis is in the scope of context-aware multiparty transport with resources allocation, allowing the delivery of content in a personalized way with Quality of Service to several users, independently of the technology and the network. Resuming, the solution implements a context-aware network architecture that reacts efficiently to its changes. In order to implement this architecture, new entities were created in the network simulator NS-2. The results were obtained using different scenarios, evaluating the influence of each parameter independently. It was demonstrated that the integration of several components, allows a delivery of contents in a personalized manner and independently of the technology. The results showed a better management of the network resources and users experience, throughout the total network selection, based on a central control unit. The multiparty transport overlay improves the network behaviour, minimizing the necessary frequent reconfigurations

Distributed multimedia systems

A distributed multimedia system (DMS) is an integrated communication, computing, and information system that enables the processing, management, delivery, and presentation of synchronized multimedia information with quality-of-service guarantees. Multimedia information may include discrete media data, such as text, data, and images, and continuous media data, such as video and audio. Such a system enhances human communications by exploiting both visual and aural senses and provides the ultimate flexibility in work and entertainment, allowing one to collaborate with remote participants, view movies on demand, access on-line digital libraries from the desktop, and so forth. In this paper, we present a technical survey of a DMS. We give an overview of distributed multimedia systems, examine the fundamental concept of digital media, identify the applications, and survey the important enabling technologies.published_or_final_versio

Cloud BI: A Multi-party Authentication Framework for Securing Business Intelligence on the Cloud

Business intelligence (BI) has emerged as a key technology to be hosted on Cloud computing. BI offers a method to analyse data thereby enabling informed decision making to improve business performance and profitability. However, within the shared domains of Cloud computing, BI is exposed to increased security and privacy threats because an unauthorised user may be able to gain access to highly sensitive, consolidated business information. The business process contains collaborating services and users from multiple Cloud systems in different security realms which need to be engaged dynamically at runtime. If the heterogamous Cloud systems located in different security realms do not have direct authentication relationships then it is technically difficult to enable a secure collaboration. In order to address these security challenges, a new authentication framework is required to establish certain trust relationships among these BI service instances and users by distributing a common session secret to all participants of a session. The author addresses this challenge by designing and implementing a multiparty authentication framework for dynamic secure interactions when members of different security realms want to access services. The framework takes advantage of the trust relationship between session members in different security realms to enable a user to obtain security credentials to access Cloud resources in a remote realm. This mechanism can help Cloud session users authenticate their session membership to improve the authentication processes within multi-party sessions. The correctness of the proposed framework has been verified by using BAN Logics. The performance and the overhead have been evaluated via simulation in a dynamic environment. A prototype authentication system has been designed, implemented and tested based on the proposed framework. The research concludes that the proposed framework and its supporting protocols are an effective functional basis for practical implementation testing, as it achieves good scalability and imposes only minimal performance overhead which is comparable with other state-of-art methods

Proposta 3GPP de indicadores de desempenho de rede - R4 CS Core Network

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesO mercado de telecomunicações tem vindo a tornar-se cada vez mais competitivo e agressivo devido à diminuição das margens dos operadores de telecomunicações. Este facto é igualmente relevante no mercado das redes móveis em que este trabalho se foca. A maior parte dos actuais mercados de redes móveis pauta-se por uma consolidação da sua base instalada e por uma optimização dos recursos existentes. Por uma questão de estratégia comercial e técnica (não dependência de um único fornecedor) é frequente os operadores de redes móveis terem mais do que um fornecedor de equipamentos de telecomunicações para a sua rede. Devido a este facto, os problemas das redes com multi-fabricantes agudizou-se o que levou à premente necessidade de se arranjar uma linguagem comum através da qual se consiga ter uma ideia do nível global de desempenho alcançado e dos pontos críticos em que a rede pode melhorar o seu desempenho. É nesta problemática que o presente trabalho se foca. Neste momento, o 3GPP tem definidos uma quantidade vasta de indicadores de desempenho de rede para a área Circuit Switch (CS) Core Network (CN) mas ainda não tem definidos os seus Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Tendo como base os indicadores de desempenho 3GPP existentes, esta Dissertação propõe um conjunto de KPIs que possibilitam a análise do desempenho da rede Core Network ao nível da sua parte CS. Esta Dissertação apresenta as propostas de KPIs para a rede CS, as quais estão divididas em três partes. Numa primeira parte são apresentados os KPIs relativos ao MSC Server (MSS) ao nível da análise de acessibilidade, utilização e mobilidade. Na segunda secção são apresentados os KPIs relativos ao Media Gateway (MGW) ao nível da análise de acessibilidade, integridade e utilização. Finalmente na terceira e última secção apresentam-se os KPIs associados ao HLR.The telecommunications market has become increasingly competitive and aggressive due to the decreasing margins of telecom operators. This fact is also relevant in the mobile networks market in which this Thesis is focused. Most of today's mobile networks is guided by a consolidation of its installed base and by optimizing existing resources. As a matter of business strategy and technique (not dependent on one supplier) it is common for the mobile network operators to have more than one telecommunications equipment supplier. Due to this, the problems of multi-vendor networks has worsened leading to the urgent need to find a common language that everyone speaks and, through which, can get an idea of overall performance level achieved and critical points where the network can improve its performance. This paper is focused on this issue. Currently, 3GPP has defined a wide range of network performance indicators for the Core Network (CN) Circuit Switch (CS) area but, nothing is yet set in what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is concerned. The purpose of this Thesis is, based on already existent 3GPP performance indicators, recommend a set of KPIs to enable the CS CN performance analysis. This Thesis present the CS KPI proposals which are divided in three main parts. In the first part, are presented the MSC Server (MSS) KPIs at accessibility analysis, usage and mobility levels. In the second part are presented the Media Gateway (MGW) related KPIs at accessibility analysis, integrity and usage levels. Finally we have the third and last part where the HLR related KPIs are presented

Integrating Context-Awareness in the IP Multimedia Subsystem for Enhanced Session Control and Service Provisioning Capabilities

The 3GPP-defined IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is becoming the de-facto standard for IP-based multimedia communication services. It consists of an overlay control and service layer that is deployed on top of IP-based mobile and fixed networks. This layer encompasses a set of common functions (e.g. session control functions allowing the initiation/modification/termination of sessions) and service logics that are needed for the seamless provisioning of IP multimedia services to users, via different access technologies. As it continues to evolve, the IMS still faces several challenges including: the enabling of innovative and personalized services that would appeal to users and increase network operators' revenues; its interaction with other types of networks (e.g. wireless sensor networks) as means to enhance its capabilities; and the support of advanced QoS schemes that would manage the network resources in an efficient and adaptive manner. The context-awareness concept, which comes from the pervasive computing field, signifies the ability to use situational information (or context) in support to operations and decision making and for the provision of relevant services to the user. Context-awareness is considered to enhance users' experience and is seen as an enabler to adaptability and service personalization - two capabilities that could play important roles in telecommunication environments. This thesis focuses on the introduction of the context-awareness technology in the IMS, as means to enhance its session control and service provisioning capabilities. It starts by presenting the necessary background information, followed by a derivation of requirements and a review of the related work. To ensure the availability of contextual information within the network, we then propose an architecture for context information acquisition and management in the IMS. This architecture leverages and extends the 3GPP presence framework. Building on the capabilities of this architecture, we demonstrate how the managed information could be integrated in IMS operations, at the control and service levels. Showcasing control level integration, we propose a novel context-aware call differentiation framework as means to offer enhanced QoS support (for sessions/calls) in IMS-based networks. This framework enables the differentiation between different categories of calls at the IMS session control level, via dynamic and adaptive resource allocation, in addition to supporting a specialized charging model. Furthermore, we also propose a framework for enhanced IMS emergency communication services. This framework addresses the limitations of existing IP-based emergency solutions, by offering three main improvements: a QoS-enhanced emergency service; a context-aware personalized emergency service; and a conferencing-enhanced emergency service. We demonstrate the use of context awareness at the IMS service level using two new context-aware IMS applications. Finally, to validate our solutions and evaluate their performance, we build various proof-of-concept prototypes and OPNET simulation model

Telecommunications Networks

This book guides readers through the basics of rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations of Telecommunications Networks. It identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Telecommunications and it contains chapters written by leading researchers, academics and industry professionals. Telecommunications Networks - Current Status and Future Trends covers surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as: IMS, eTOM, 3G/4G, optimization problems, modeling, simulation, quality of service, etc. This book, that is suitable for both PhD and master students, is organized into six sections: New Generation Networks, Quality of Services, Sensor Networks, Telecommunications, Traffic Engineering and Routing