Quality of service differentiation for multimedia delivery in wireless LANs

Delivering multimedia content to heterogeneous devices over a variable networking environment while maintaining high quality levels involves many technical challenges. The research reported in this thesis presents a solution for Quality of Service (QoS)-based service differentiation when delivering multimedia content over the wireless LANs. This thesis has three major contributions outlined below: 1. A Model-based Bandwidth Estimation algorithm (MBE), which estimates the available bandwidth based on novel TCP and UDP throughput models over IEEE 802.11 WLANs. MBE has been modelled, implemented, and tested through simulations and real life testing. In comparison with other bandwidth estimation techniques, MBE shows better performance in terms of error rate, overhead, and loss. 2. An intelligent Prioritized Adaptive Scheme (iPAS), which provides QoS service differentiation for multimedia delivery in wireless networks. iPAS assigns dynamic priorities to various streams and determines their bandwidth share by employing a probabilistic approach-which makes use of stereotypes. The total bandwidth to be allocated is estimated using MBE. The priority level of individual stream is variable and dependent on stream-related characteristics and delivery QoS parameters. iPAS can be deployed seamlessly over the original IEEE 802.11 protocols and can be included in the IEEE 802.21 framework in order to optimize the control signal communication. iPAS has been modelled, implemented, and evaluated via simulations. The results demonstrate that iPAS achieves better performance than the equal channel access mechanism over IEEE 802.11 DCF and a service differentiation scheme on top of IEEE 802.11e EDCA, in terms of fairness, throughput, delay, loss, and estimated PSNR. Additionally, both objective and subjective video quality assessment have been performed using a prototype system. 3. A QoS-based Downlink/Uplink Fairness Scheme, which uses the stereotypes-based structure to balance the QoS parameters (i.e. throughput, delay, and loss) between downlink and uplink VoIP traffic. The proposed scheme has been modelled and tested through simulations. The results show that, in comparison with other downlink/uplink fairness-oriented solutions, the proposed scheme performs better in terms of VoIP capacity and fairness level between downlink and uplink traffic

Final report on the evaluation of RRM/CRRM algorithms

Deliverable public del projecte EVERESTThis deliverable provides a definition and a complete evaluation of the RRM/CRRM algorithms selected in D11 and D15, and evolved and refined on an iterative process. The evaluation will be carried out by means of simulations using the simulators provided at D07, and D14.Preprin

Self-concatenated coding for wireless communication systems

In this thesis, we have explored self-concatenated coding schemes that are designed for transmission over Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. We designed both the symbol-based Self-ConcatenatedCodes considered using Trellis Coded Modulation (SECTCM) and bit-based Self- Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SECCC) using a Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) encoder as constituent codes, respectively. The design of these codes was carried out with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts. The EXIT chart based design has been found an efficient tool in finding the decoding convergence threshold of the constituent codes. Additionally, in order to recover the information loss imposed by employing binary rather than non-binary schemes, a soft decision demapper was introduced in order to exchange extrinsic information withthe SECCC decoder. To analyse this information exchange 3D-EXIT chart analysis was invoked for visualizing the extrinsic information exchange between the proposed Iteratively Decoding aided SECCC and soft-decision demapper (SECCC-ID). Some of the proposed SECTCM, SECCC and SECCC-ID schemes perform within about 1 dB from the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels’ capacity. A union bound analysis of SECCC codes was carried out to find the corresponding Bit Error Ratio (BER) floors. The union bound of SECCCs was derived for communications over both AWGN and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels, based on a novel interleaver concept.Application of SECCCs in both UltraWideBand (UWB) and state-of-the-art video-telephone schemes demonstrated its practical benefits.In order to further exploit the benefits of the low complexity design offered by SECCCs we explored their application in a distributed coding scheme designed for cooperative communications, where iterative detection is employed by exchanging extrinsic information between the decoders of SECCC and RSC at the destination. In the first transmission period of cooperation, the relay receives the potentially erroneous data and attempts to recover the information. The recovered information is then re-encoded at the relay using an RSC encoder. In the second transmission period this information is then retransmitted to the destination. The resultant symbols transmitted from the source and relay nodes can be viewed as the coded symbols of a three-component parallel-concatenated encoder. At the destination a Distributed Binary Self-Concatenated Coding scheme using Iterative Decoding (DSECCC-ID) was employed, where the two decoders (SECCC and RSC) exchange their extrinsic information. It was shown that the DSECCC-ID is a low-complexity scheme, yet capable of approaching the Discrete-input Continuous-output Memoryless Channels’s (DCMC) capacity.Finally, we considered coding schemes designed for two nodes communicating with each other with the aid of a relay node, where the relay receives information from the two nodes in the first transmission period. At the relay node we combine a powerful Superposition Coding (SPC) scheme with SECCC. It is assumed that decoding errors may be encountered at the relay node. The relay node then broadcasts this information in the second transmission period after re-encoding it, again, using a SECCC encoder. At the destination, the amalgamated block of Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) scheme combined with SECCC then detects and decodes the signal either with or without the aid of a priori information. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is capable of reliably operating at a low BER for transmission over both AWGN and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. We compare the proposed scheme’s performance to a direct transmission link between the two sources having the same throughput

Contribution to the construction of fingerprinting and watermarking schemes to protect mobile agents and multimedia content

The main characteristic of fingerprinting codes is the need of high error-correction capacity due to the fact that they are designed to avoid collusion attacks which will damage many symbols from the codewords. Moreover, the use of fingerprinting schemes depends on the watermarking system that is used to embed the codeword into the content and how it honors the marking assumption. In this sense, even though fingerprinting codes were mainly used to protect multimedia content, using them on software protection systems seems an option to be considered. This thesis, studies how to use codes which have iterative-decoding algorithms, mainly turbo-codes, to solve the fingerprinting problem. Initially, it studies the effectiveness of current approaches based on concatenating tradicioanal fingerprinting schemes with convolutional codes and turbo-codes. It is shown that these kind of constructions ends up generating a high number of false positives. Even though this thesis contains some proposals to improve these schemes, the direct use of turbo-codes without using any concatenation with a fingerprinting code as inner code has also been considered. It is shown that the performance of turbo-codes using the appropiate constituent codes is a valid alternative for environments with hundreds of users and 2 or 3 traitors. As constituent codes, we have chosen low-rate convolutional codes with maximum free distance. As for how to use fingerprinting codes with watermarking schemes, we have studied the option of using watermarking systems based on informed coding and informed embedding. It has been discovered that, due to different encodings available for the same symbol, its applicability to embed fingerprints is very limited. On this sense, some modifications to these systems have been proposed in order to properly adapt them to fingerprinting applications. Moreover the behavior and impact over a video produced as a collusion of 2 users by the YouTube’s s ervice has been s tudied. We have also studied the optimal parameters for viable tracking of users who have used YouTube and conspired to redistribute copies generated by a collusion attack. Finally, we have studied how to implement fingerprinting schemes and software watermarking to fix the problem of malicious hosts on mobile agents platforms. In this regard, four different alternatives have been proposed to protect the agent depending on whether you want only detect the attack or avoid it in real time. Two of these proposals are focused on the protection of intrusion detection systems based on mobile agents. Moreover, each of these solutions has several implications in terms of infrastructure and complexity.Els codis fingerprinting es caracteritzen per proveir una alta capacitat correctora ja que han de fer front a atacs de confabulació que malmetran una part important dels símbols de la paraula codi. D'atra banda, la utilització de codis de fingerprinting en entorns reals està subjecta a que l'esquema de watermarking que gestiona la incrustació sigui respectuosa amb la marking assumption. De la mateixa manera, tot i que el fingerprinting neix de la protecció de contingut multimèdia, utilitzar-lo en la protecció de software comença a ser una aplicació a avaluar. En aquesta tesi s'ha estudiat com aplicar codis amb des codificació iterativa, concretament turbo-codis, al problema del rastreig de traïdors en el context del fingerprinting digital. Inicialment s'ha qüestionat l'eficàcia dels enfocaments actuals en la utilització de codis convolucionals i turbo-codis que plantegen concatenacions amb esquemes habituals de fingerprinting. S'ha demostrat que aquest tipus de concatenacions portaven, de forma implícita, a una elevada probabilitat d'inculpar un usuari innocent. Tot i que s'han proposat algunes millores sobre aquests esquemes , finalment s'ha plantejat l'ús de turbocodis directament, evitant així la concatenació amb altres esquemes de fingerprinting. S'ha demostrat que, si s'utilitzen els codis constituents apropiats, el rendiment del turbo-descodificador és suficient per a ser una alternativa aplicable en entorns amb varis centenars d'usuaris i 2 o 3 confabuladors . Com a codis constituents s'ha optat pels codis convolucionals de baix ràtio amb distància lliure màxima. Pel que fa a com utilitzar els codis de fingerprinting amb esquemes de watermarking, s'ha estudiat l'opció d'utilitzar sistemes de watermarking basats en la codificació i la incrustació informada. S'ha comprovat que, degut a la múltiple codificació del mateix símbol, la seva aplicabilitat per incrustar fingerprints és molt limitada. En aquest sentit s'ha plantejat algunes modificacions d'aquests sistemes per tal d'adaptar-los correctament a aplicacions de fingerprinting. D'altra banda s'ha avaluat el comportament i l'impacte que el servei de YouTube produeix sobre un vídeo amb un fingerprint incrustat. A més , s'ha estudiat els paràmetres òptims per a fer viable el rastreig d'usuaris que han confabulat i han utilitzat YouTube per a redistribuir la copia fruït de la seva confabulació. Finalment, s'ha estudiat com aplicar els esquemes de fingerprinting i watermarking de software per solucionar el problema de l'amfitrió maliciós en agents mòbils . En aquest sentit s'han proposat quatre alternatives diferents per a protegir l'agent en funció de si és vol només detectar l'atac o evitar-lo en temps real. Dues d'aquestes propostes es centren en la protecció de sistemes de detecció d'intrusions basats en agents mòbils. Cadascuna de les solucions té diverses implicacions a nivell d'infrastructura i de complexitat.Postprint (published version

Streaming Video Performance and Enhancements in Resource-Constrained Wireless Networks

Streaming video is an increasingly popular application in wireless networks. The concept of a live streaming video yields several enticing possibilities: real-time video conferencing, television broadcasting, pay-per-view movie streaming, and more. These ideas have already been explored via the internet and have met with mixed success, largely due to the shortcomings of the underlying network. Taking streaming video to wireless networks, then, poses several significant challenges. Wireless networks are inherently more susceptible to failures and data corruption due to their unstable communications medium. This volatility suggests serious drawbacks for any implementation of streaming video. Video frame errors, jitter, and even complete sync loss are entirely conceivable in a wireless environment. Many of these issues have been undertaken and several approaches to mediation or even solution of these problems are underway. This thesis proposes to use advanced simulation techniques to properly exhaustively permute many vital parameters within a UMTS network and uncover, if they exist, bottlenecks in UMTS performance under considerable network load. This is accomplished via a described testing plan with simulation environment. Additionally this thesis proposes a new UDP-like transport layer specially optimized for streaming media over resource-constrained networks, tested to work with significant improvements under the UMTS cellular networking system. Finally this thesis provides several innovative new methods in the furtherance of the field of streaming media research in resourceconstrained and cellular environments. Overall this thesis makes several important contributes to an exciting and ever-growing field of active research and discussion

Packet prioritizing and delivering for multimedia streaming

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Multimedia

The nowadays ubiquitous and effortless digital data capture and processing capabilities offered by the majority of devices, lead to an unprecedented penetration of multimedia content in our everyday life. To make the most of this phenomenon, the rapidly increasing volume and usage of digitised content requires constant re-evaluation and adaptation of multimedia methodologies, in order to meet the relentless change of requirements from both the user and system perspectives. Advances in Multimedia provides readers with an overview of the ever-growing field of multimedia by bringing together various research studies and surveys from different subfields that point out such important aspects. Some of the main topics that this book deals with include: multimedia management in peer-to-peer structures & wireless networks, security characteristics in multimedia, semantic gap bridging for multimedia content and novel multimedia applications

On the performance of video resolution, motion and dynamism in transmission using near-capacity transceiver for wireless communication

This article investigates the performance of various sophisticated channel coding and transmission schemes for achieving reliable transmission of a highly compressed video stream. Novel error protection schemes including Non-Convergent Coding (NCC) scheme, Non-Convergent Coding assisted with Differential Space Time Spreading (DSTS) and Sphere Packing (SP) modulation (NCDSTS-SP) scheme and Convergent Coding assisted with DSTS and SP modulation (CDSTS-SP) are analyzed using Bit Error Ratio (BER) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) performance metrics. Furthermore, error reduction is achieved using sophisticated transceiver comprising SP modulation technique assisted by Differential Space Time Spreading. The performance of the iterative Soft Bit Source Decoding (SBSD) in combination with channel codes is analyzed using various error protection setups by allocating consistent overall bit-rate budget. Additionally, the iterative behavior of SBSD assisted RSC decoder is analyzed with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) Chart in order to analyze the achievable turbo cliff of the iterative decoding process. The subjective and objective video quality performance of the proposed error protection schemes is analyzed while employing H.264 advanced video coding and H.265 high efficient video coding standards, while utilizing diverse video sequences having different resolution, motion and dynamism. It was observed that in the presence of noisy channel the low resolution videos outperforms its high resolution counterparts. Furthermore, it was observed that the performance of video sequence with low motion contents and dynamism outperforms relative to video sequence with high motion contents and dynamism. More specifically, it is observed that while utilizing H.265 video coding standard, the Non-Convergent Coding assisted with DSTS and SP modulation scheme with enhanced transmission mechanism results in Eb/N0 gain of 20 dB with reference to the Non-Convergent Coding and transmission mechanism at the objective PSNR value of 42 dB. It is important to mention that both the schemes have employed identical code rate. Furthermore, the Convergent Coding assisted with DSTS and SP modulation mechanism achieved superior performance with reference to the equivalent rate Non-Convergent Coding assisted with DSTS and SP modulation counterpart mechanism, with a performance gain of 16 dB at the objective PSNR grade of 42 dB. Moreover, it is observed that the maximum achievable PSNR gain through H.265 video coding standard is 45 dB, with a PSNR gain of 3 dB with reference to the identical code rate H.264 coding scheme.Web of Science235art. no. 56

Tatouage du flux compressé MPEG-4 AVC

La présente thèse aborde le sujet de tatouage du flux MPEG-4 AVC sur ses deux volets théoriques et applicatifs en considérant deux domaines applicatifs à savoir la protection du droit d auteur et la vérification de l'intégrité du contenu. Du point de vue théorique, le principal enjeu est de développer un cadre de tatouage unitaire en mesure de servir les deux applications mentionnées ci-dessus. Du point de vue méthodologique, le défi consiste à instancier ce cadre théorique pour servir les applications visées. La première contribution principale consiste à définir un cadre théorique pour le tatouage multi symboles à base de modulation d index de quantification (m-QIM). La règle d insertion QIM a été généralisée du cas binaire au cas multi-symboles et la règle de détection optimale (minimisant la probabilité d erreur à la détection en condition du bruit blanc, additif et gaussien) a été établie. Il est ainsi démontré que la quantité d information insérée peut être augmentée par un facteur de log2m tout en gardant les mêmes contraintes de robustesse et de transparence. Une quantité d information de 150 bits par minutes, soit environ 20 fois plus grande que la limite imposée par la norme DCI est obtenue. La deuxième contribution consiste à spécifier une opération de prétraitement qui permet d éliminer les impactes du phénomène du drift (propagation de la distorsion) dans le flux compressé MPEG-4 AVC. D abord, le problème a été formalisé algébriquement en se basant sur les expressions analytiques des opérations d encodage. Ensuite, le problème a été résolu sous la contrainte de prévention du drift. Une amélioration de la transparence avec des gains de 2 dB en PSNR est obtenueThe present thesis addresses the MPEG-4 AVC stream watermarking and considers two theoretical and applicative challenges, namely ownership protection and content integrity verification.From the theoretical point of view, the thesis main challenge is to develop a unitary watermarking framework (insertion/detection) able to serve the two above mentioned applications in the compressed domain. From the methodological point of view, the challenge is to instantiate this theoretical framework for serving the targeted applications. The thesis first main contribution consists in building the theoretical framework for the multi symbol watermarking based on quantization index modulation (m-QIM). The insertion rule is analytically designed by extending the binary QIM rule. The detection rule is optimized so as to ensure minimal probability of error under additive white Gaussian noise distributed attacks. It is thus demonstrated that the data payload can be increased by a factor of log2m, for prescribed transparency and additive Gaussian noise power. A data payload of 150 bits per minute, i.e. about 20 times larger than the limit imposed by the DCI standard, is obtained. The thesis second main theoretical contribution consists in specifying a preprocessing MPEG-4 AVC shaping operation which can eliminate the intra-frame drift effect. The drift represents the distortion spread in the compressed stream related to the MPEG encoding paradigm. In this respect, the drift distortion propagation problem in MPEG-4 AVC is algebraically expressed and the corresponding equations system is solved under drift-free constraints. The drift-free shaping results in gain in transparency of 2 dB in PSNREVRY-INT (912282302) / SudocSudocFranceF