Seamless Multimedia Delivery Within a Heterogeneous Wireless Networks Environment: Are We There Yet?

The increasing popularity of live video streaming from mobile devices, such as Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, etc. pressurizes the network operators to increase the capacity of their networks. However, a simple increase in system capacity will not be enough without considering the provisioning of quality of experience (QoE) as the basis for network control, customer loyalty, and retention rate and thus increase in network operators revenue. As QoE is gaining strong momentum especially with increasing users' quality expectations, the focus is now on proposing innovative solutions to enable QoE when delivering video content over heterogeneous wireless networks. In this context, this paper presents an overview of multimedia delivery solutions, identifies the problems and provides a comprehensive classification of related state-of-the-art approaches following three key directions: 1) adaptation; 2) energy efficiency; and 3) multipath content delivery. Discussions, challenges, and open issues on the seamless multimedia provisioning faced by the current and next generation of wireless networks are also provided

Seamless multimedia delivery within a heterogeneous wireless networks environment: are we there yet?

The increasing popularity of live video streaming from mobile devices such as Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Snapchat, etc. pressurises the network operators to increase the capacity of their networks. However, a simple increase in system capacity will not be enough without considering the provisioning of Quality of Experience (QoE) as the basis for network control, customer loyalty and retention rate and thus increase in network operators revenue. As QoE is gaining strong momentum especially with increasing users’ quality expectations, the focus is now on proposing innovative solutions to enable QoE when delivering video content over heterogeneous wireless networks. In this context, this paper presents an overview of multimedia delivery solutions, identifies the problems and provides a comprehensive classification of related state-of-the-art approaches following three key directions: adaptation, energy efficiency and multipath content delivery. Discussions, challenges and open issues on the seamless multimedia provisioning faced by the current and next generation of wireless networks are also provided

3D video coding and transmission

The capture, transmission, and display of 3D content has gained a lot of attention in the last few years. 3D multimedia content is no longer con fined to cinema theatres but is being transmitted using stereoscopic video over satellite, shared on Blu-RayTMdisks, or sent over Internet technologies. Stereoscopic displays are needed at the receiving end and the viewer needs to wear special glasses to present the two versions of the video to the human vision system that then generates the 3D illusion. To be more e ffective and improve the immersive experience, more views are acquired from a larger number of cameras and presented on di fferent displays, such as autostereoscopic and light field displays. These multiple views, combined with depth data, also allow enhanced user experiences and new forms of interaction with the 3D content from virtual viewpoints. This type of audiovisual information is represented by a huge amount of data that needs to be compressed and transmitted over bandwidth-limited channels. Part of the COST Action IC1105 \3D Content Creation, Coding and Transmission over Future Media Networks" (3DConTourNet) focuses on this research challenge.peer-reviewe

Quality of Experience monitoring and management strategies for future smart networks

One of the major driving forces of the service and network's provider market is the user's perceived service quality and expectations, which are referred to as user's Quality of Experience (QoE). It is evident that QoE is particularly critical for network providers, who are challenged with the multimedia engineering problems (e.g. processing, compression) typical of traditional networks. They need to have the right QoE monitoring and management mechanisms to have a significant impact on their budget (e.g. by reducing the users‘ churn). Moreover, due to the rapid growth of mobile networks and multimedia services, it is crucial for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to accurately monitor and manage the QoE for the delivered services and at the same time keep the computational resources and the power consumption at low levels. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the issue of QoE monitoring and management for future networks. This research, developed during the PhD programme, aims to describe the State-of-the-Art and the concept of Virtual Probes (vProbes). Then, I proposed a QoE monitoring and management solution, two Agent-based solutions for QoE monitoring in LTE-Advanced networks, a QoE monitoring solution for multimedia services in 5G networks and an SDN-based approach for QoE management of multimedia services

Quality-driven resource utilization methods for video streaming in wireless communication networks

This research is focused on the optimisation of resource utilisation in wireless mobile networks with the consideration of the users’ experienced quality of video streaming services. The study specifically considers the new generation of mobile communication networks, i.e. 4G-LTE, as the main research context. The background study provides an overview of the main properties of the relevant technologies investigated. These include video streaming protocols and networks, video service quality assessment methods, the infrastructure and related functionalities of LTE, and resource allocation algorithms in mobile communication systems. A mathematical model based on an objective and no-reference quality assessment metric for video streaming, namely Pause Intensity, is developed in this work for the evaluation of the continuity of streaming services. The analytical model is verified by extensive simulation and subjective testing on the joint impairment effects of the pause duration and pause frequency. Various types of the video contents and different levels of the impairments have been used in the process of validation tests. It has been shown that Pause Intensity is closely correlated with the subjective quality measurement in terms of the Mean Opinion Score and this correlation property is content independent. Based on the Pause Intensity metric, an optimised resource allocation approach is proposed for the given user requirements, communication system specifications and network performances. This approach concerns both system efficiency and fairness when establishing appropriate resource allocation algorithms, together with the consideration of the correlation between the required and allocated data rates per user. Pause Intensity plays a key role here, representing the required level of Quality of Experience (QoE) to ensure the best balance between system efficiency and fairness. The 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) system is used as the main application environment where the proposed research framework is examined and the results are compared with existing scheduling methods on the achievable fairness, efficiency and correlation. Adaptive video streaming technologies are also investigated and combined with our initiatives on determining the distribution of QoE performance across the network. The resulting scheduling process is controlled through the prioritization of users by considering their perceived quality for the services received. Meanwhile, a trade-off between fairness and efficiency is maintained through an online adjustment of the scheduler’s parameters. Furthermore, Pause Intensity is applied to act as a regulator to realise the rate adaptation function during the end user’s playback of the adaptive streaming service. The adaptive rates under various channel conditions and the shape of the QoE distribution amongst the users for different scheduling policies have been demonstrated in the context of LTE. Finally, the work for interworking between mobile communication system at the macro-cell level and the different deployments of WiFi technologies throughout the macro-cell is presented. A QoEdriven approach is proposed to analyse the offloading mechanism of the user’s data (e.g. video traffic) while the new rate distribution algorithm reshapes the network capacity across the macrocell. The scheduling policy derived is used to regulate the performance of the resource allocation across the fair-efficient spectrum. The associated offloading mechanism can properly control the number of the users within the coverages of the macro-cell base station and each of the WiFi access points involved. The performance of the non-seamless and user-controlled mobile traffic offloading (through the mobile WiFi devices) has been evaluated and compared with that of the standard operator-controlled WiFi hotspots