Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

EVEREST IST - 2002 - 00185 : D23 : final report

Deliverable públic del projecte europeu EVERESTThis deliverable constitutes the final report of the project IST-2002-001858 EVEREST. After its successful completion, the project presents this document that firstly summarizes the context, goal and the approach objective of the project. Then it presents a concise summary of the major goals and results, as well as highlights the most valuable lessons derived form the project work. A list of deliverables and publications is included in the annex.Postprint (published version

Interworking Architectures in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: An Algorithmic Overview

The scarce availability of spectrum and the proliferation of smartphones, social networking applications, online gaming etc., mobile network operators (MNOs) are faced with an exponential growth in packet switched data requirements on their networks. Haven invested in legacy systems (such as HSPA, WCDMA, WiMAX, Cdma2000, LTE, etc.) that have hitherto withstood the current and imminent data usage demand, future and projected usage surpass the capabilities of the evolution of these individual technologies. Hence, a more critical, cost-effective and flexible approach to provide ubiquitous coverage for the user using available spectrum is of high demand. Heterogeneous Networks make use of these legacy systems by allowing users to connect to the best network available and most importantly seamlessly handover active sessions amidst them. This paper presents a survey of interworking architectures between IMT 2000 candidate networks that employ the use of IEFT protocols such as MIP, mSCTP, HIP, MOBIKE, IKEV2 and SIP etc. to bring about this much needed capacity

User-centric QoE-driven vertical handover framework in heterogeneous wireless networks

© 2016 IEEE. With advances in wireless technology and the increase in popularity of mobile devices, more and more people now rely on mobile devices for multimedia services (such as video streaming and video calls). A mobile device can be connected and roamed to different networks in heterogeneous wireless networks. The Media Independent Handover (MIH) framework is designed by the IEEE 802.21 group to support seamless vertical handover between different networks. However, how to select an appropriate network from available ones and when to execute the handover remain the key challenges in MIH. This paper proposes a user-centric QoE-driven vertical handover (VHO) framework, based on MIH, which aims to maintain acceptable QoE of different mobile application services and to select an appropriate network based on users' preferences (e.g. on cost). Further a user-centric QoE-driven algorithm is implemented in the proposed framework. Its performance is evaluated and compared with two other VHO algorithms based on Network Simulator 2 (NS2) for video streaming services over heterogeneous networks. The preliminary results show that the proposed algorithm can maintain better QoE and at the same time, take into account user's preference on cost when compared with the other two algorithms

UEFA-M: Utility-based energy efficient adaptive multimedia mechanism over LTE HetNet small cells

The emerging advances in mobile computing devices enable the adoption of new services like video over LTE (ViLTE), augmented and virtual reality, omnidirectional video, etc. However, these new services cannot be technologically achievable within the current networks without a rethink in the network architecture. 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. This paper proposes an Utility-based Energy eFficient Adaptive Multimedia Mechanism (UEFA-M) over the LTE HetNet Small Cells environment that combines the use of utility theory and the concept of proactive handover to enable the adaptation of the multimedia stream ahead of the handover process in order to provide a seamless QoE to the mobile user and energy savings for their mobile device. Mathematical models for energy and quality are derived from previous real experimental data and integrated in the adaptation mechanism using the utility theory. The performance of the proposed adaptive multimedia scheme is analyzed and compared against a non-adaptive solution in terms of energy efficiency and Mean Opinion Score (MOS

Quality-Oriented Mobility Management for Multimedia Content Delivery to Mobile Users

The heterogeneous wireless networking environment determined by the latest developments in wireless access technologies promises a high level of communication resources for mobile computational devices. Although the communication resources provided, especially referring to bandwidth, enable multimedia streaming to mobile users, maintaining a high user perceived quality is still a challenging task. The main factors which affect quality in multimedia streaming over wireless networks are mainly the error-prone nature of the wireless channels and the user mobility. These factors determine a high level of dynamics of wireless communication resources, namely variations in throughput and packet loss as well as network availability and delays in delivering the data packets. Under these conditions maintaining a high level of quality, as perceived by the user, requires a quality oriented mobility management scheme. Consequently we propose the Smooth Adaptive Soft-Handover Algorithm, a novel quality oriented handover management scheme which unlike other similar solutions, smoothly transfer the data traffic from one network to another using multiple simultaneous connections. To estimate the capacity of each connection the novel Quality of Multimedia Streaming (QMS) metric is proposed. The QMS metric aims at offering maximum flexibility and efficiency allowing the applications to fine tune the behavior of the handover algorithm. The current simulation-based performance evaluation clearly shows the better performance of the proposed Smooth Adaptive Soft-Handover Algorithm as compared with other handover solutions. The evaluation was performed in various scenarios including multiple mobile hosts performing handover simultaneously, wireless networks with variable overlapping areas, and various network congestion levels

On the Real-Time Hardware Implementation Feasibility of Joint Radio Resource Management Policies for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The study and design of Joint Radio Resource Management (JRRM) techniques is a key and challenging aspect in future heterogeneous wireless systems where different Radio Access Technologies will physically coexist. In these systems, the total available radio resources need to be used in a coordinated way to guarantee adequate satisfaction levels to all users, and maximize the system revenues. In addition to carry out an efficient use of the available radio resources, JRRM algorithms need to exhibit good computational performance to guarantee their future implementation viability. In this context, this paper proposes novel JRRM techniques based on linear programming techniques, and investigates their computational cost when implemented in DSP platforms commonly used in mobile base stations. The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility to implement the proposed JRRM algorithms in future heterogeneous wireless systems