Anticipatory Buffer Control and Quality Selection for Wireless Video Streaming

Video streaming is in high demand by mobile users, as recent studies indicate. In cellular networks, however, the unreliable wireless channel leads to two major problems. Poor channel states degrade video quality and interrupt the playback when a user cannot sufficiently fill its local playout buffer: buffer underruns occur. In contrast to that, good channel conditions cause common greedy buffering schemes to pile up very long buffers. Such over-buffering wastes expensive wireless channel capacity. To keep buffering in balance, we employ a novel approach. Assuming that we can predict data rates, we plan the quality and download time of the video segments ahead. This anticipatory scheduling avoids buffer underruns by downloading a large number of segments before a channel outage occurs, without wasting wireless capacity by excessive buffering. We formalize this approach as an optimization problem and derive practical heuristics for segmented video streaming protocols (e.g., HLS or MPEG DASH). Simulation results and testbed measurements show that our solution essentially eliminates playback interruptions without significantly decreasing video quality

Providing Delay Guarantees in Bluetooth

Bluetooth polling, also referred to as Bluetooth MAC scheduling or intra-piconet scheduling, is the mechanism that schedules the traffic between the participants in a Bluetooth network. Hence, this mechanism is highly determining with respect to the delay packets experience in a Bluetooth network. In this paper we present a polling mechanism that provides delay guarantees in an efficient manner and we evaluate this polling mechanism by means of simulation. It is shown that this polling mechanism is able to provide delay guarantees while saving as much as possible resources, which can be used for transmission of best effort traffic or for retransmission

Performance evaluation of MPEG-4 video streaming over UMTS networks using an integrated tool environment

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third-generation mobile communications system that supports wireless wideband multimedia applications. This paper investigates the video quality attained in streaming MPEG-4 video over UMTS networks using an integrated tool environment, which comprises an MPEG-4 encoder/decoder, a network simulator and video quality evaluation tools. The benefit of such an integrated tool environment is that it allows the evaluation of real video sources compressed using an MPEG-4 encoder. Simulation results show that UMTS Radio Link Control (RLC) outperforms the unacknowledged mode. The latter mode provides timely delivery but no error recovery. The acknowledged mode can deliver excellent perceived video quality for RLC block error rates up to 30% utilizing a playback buffer at the streaming client. Based on the analysis of the performance results, a self-adaptive RLC acknowledged mode protocol is proposed

Cognition-Based Networks: A New Perspective on Network Optimization Using Learning and Distributed Intelligence

IEEE Access Volume 3, 2015, Article number 7217798, Pages 1512-1530 Open Access Cognition-based networks: A new perspective on network optimization using learning and distributed intelligence (Article) Zorzi, M.a , Zanella, A.a, Testolin, A.b, De Filippo De Grazia, M.b, Zorzi, M.bc a Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, Italy b Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy c IRCCS San Camillo Foundation, Venice-Lido, Italy View additional affiliations View references (107) Abstract In response to the new challenges in the design and operation of communication networks, and taking inspiration from how living beings deal with complexity and scalability, in this paper we introduce an innovative system concept called COgnition-BAsed NETworkS (COBANETS). The proposed approach develops around the systematic application of advanced machine learning techniques and, in particular, unsupervised deep learning and probabilistic generative models for system-wide learning, modeling, optimization, and data representation. Moreover, in COBANETS, we propose to combine this learning architecture with the emerging network virtualization paradigms, which make it possible to actuate automatic optimization and reconfiguration strategies at the system level, thus fully unleashing the potential of the learning approach. Compared with the past and current research efforts in this area, the technical approach outlined in this paper is deeply interdisciplinary and more comprehensive, calling for the synergic combination of expertise of computer scientists, communications and networking engineers, and cognitive scientists, with the ultimate aim of breaking new ground through a profound rethinking of how the modern understanding of cognition can be used in the management and optimization of telecommunication network

Multimedia Content Distribution in Hybrid Wireless Networks using Weighted Clustering

Fixed infrastructured networks naturally support centralized approaches for group management and information provisioning. Contrary to infrastructured networks, in multi-hop ad-hoc networks each node acts as a router as well as sender and receiver. Some applications, however, requires hierarchical arrangements that-for practical reasons-has to be done locally and self-organized. An additional challenge is to deal with mobility that causes permanent network partitioning and re-organizations. Technically, these problems can be tackled by providing additional uplinks to a backbone network, which can be used to access resources in the Internet as well as to inter-link multiple ad-hoc network partitions, creating a hybrid wireless network. In this paper, we present a prototypically implemented hybrid wireless network system optimized for multimedia content distribution. To efficiently manage the ad-hoc communicating devices a weighted clustering algorithm is introduced. The proposed localized algorithm deals with mobility, but does not require geographical information or distances.Comment: 2nd ACM Workshop on Wireless Multimedia Networking and Performance Modeling 2006 (ISBN 1-59593-485