Evaluation of unidirectional background push content download services for the delivery of television programs

Este trabajo de tesis presenta los servicios de descarga de contenido en modo push como un mecanismo eficiente para el envío de contenido de televisión pre-producido sobre redes de difusión. Hoy en día, los operadores de red dedican una cantidad considerable de recursos de red a la entrega en vivo de contenido televisivo, tanto sobre redes de difusión como sobre conexiones unidireccionales. Esta oferta de servicios responde únicamente a requisitos comerciales: disponer de los contenidos televisivos en cualquier momento y lugar. Sin embargo, desde un punto de vista estrictamente académico, el envío en vivo es únicamente un requerimiento para el contenido en vivo, no para contenidos que ya han sido producidos con anterioridad a su emisión. Más aún, la difusión es solo eficiente cuando el contenido es suficientemente popular. Los servicios bajo estudio en esta tesis utilizan capacidad residual en redes de difusión para enviar contenido pre-producido para que se almacene en los equipos de usuario. La propuesta se justifica únicamente por su eficiencia. Por un lado, genera valor de recursos de red que no se aprovecharían de otra manera. Por otro lado, realiza la entrega de contenidos pre-producidos y populares de la manera más eficiente: sobre servicios de descarga de contenidos en difusión. Los resultados incluyen modelos para la popularidad y la duración de contenidos, valiosos para cualquier trabajo de investigación basados en la entrega de contenidos televisivos. Además, la tesis evalúa la capacidad residual disponible en redes de difusión, por medio de estudios empíricos. Después, estos resultados son utilizados en simulaciones que evalúan las prestaciones de los servicios propuestos en escenarios diferentes y para aplicaciones diferentes. La evaluación demuestra que este tipo de servicios son un recurso muy útil para la entrega de contenido televisivo.This thesis dissertation presents background push Content Download Services as an efficient mechanism to deliver pre-produced television content through existing broadcast networks. Nowadays, network operators dedicate a considerable amount of network resources to live streaming live, through both broadcast and unicast connections. This service offering responds solely to commercial requirements: Content must be available anytime and anywhere. However, from a strictly academic point of view, live streaming is only a requirement for live content and not for pre-produced content. Moreover, broadcasting is only efficient when the content is sufficiently popular. The services under study in this thesis use residual capacity in broadcast networks to push popular, pre-produced content to storage capacity in customer premises equipment. The proposal responds only to efficiency requirements. On one hand, it creates value from network resources otherwise unused. On the other hand, it delivers popular pre-produced content in the most efficient way: through broadcast download services. The results include models for the popularity and the duration of television content, valuable for any research work dealing with file-based delivery of television content. Later, the thesis evaluates the residual capacity available in broadcast networks through empirical studies. These results are used in simulations to evaluate the performance of background push content download services in different scenarios and for different applications. The evaluation proves that this kind of services can become a great asset for the delivery of television contentFraile Gil, F. (2013). Evaluation of unidirectional background push content download services for the delivery of television programs [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/31656TESI

Priority-Oriented Adaptive Control With QoS Guarantee for Wireless LANs.

In today’s wireless networks there is a great need for QoS, because of the time-bounded voice, audio and video traffic. A new QoS enhanced standard is being standardized by the IEEE 802.11e workgroup. It uses a contention free access mechanism called Hybrid Control Channel Access (HCCA) to guarantee QoS. However, HCCA is not efficient for all types of time-bounded traffic. This work proposes an alternative protocol which could be adapted in HCF (Hybrid Coordination Function). The Priority Oriented Adaptive Control with QoS Guarantee (POAC-QG) is a complete centralized channel access mechanism, it is able to guarantee QoS for all types of multimedia network applications, it enhances the parameterized traffic with priorities, and it supports time division access using slots. Furthermore, it instantly negotiates the quality levels of the traffic streams according to their priorities, supporting multiple streams to the best quality it can achieve. POAC-QG compared to HCCA, provides higher channel utilization, adapts better to the characteristics of the different traffic types, differentiates the traffic streams more efficiently using priorities, and generally exhibits superior performance

Performance of VBR packer video communications on an ethernet LAN: A trace-driven simulation study

Provision of multimedia communication services on today’s packet-switched network infrastructure is becoming increasingly feasible. However, there remains a lack of information regarding the performance of multimedia sources operating in bursty data traffic conditions. In this study, a videotelephony system deployed on the Ethernet LAN is simulated, employing high time-resolution LAN traces as the data traffic load. In comparison with Poisson traffic models, the trace-driven cases produce highly variable packet delays, and higher packet loss, thereby degrading video traffic performance. In order to compensate for these effects, a delay control scheme based on a timed packet dropping algorithm is examined. Simulations of the scheme indicate that improvements in real time loss rates of videotelphony sources can be achieved

New Algorithms for Capacity Allocation and Scheduling of Multiplexed Variable Bit Rate Video Sources

This study presents simple and accurate heuristics for determining the equivalent bandwidth for multiplexed variable bit rate (VBR) video sources. The results are based on empirical studies of measurement data of various classes of VBR video sources. They are also validated through extensive simulation. The principal result is that the equivalent bandwidth per source for n independent and identically distributed VBR video sources may be approximated by a hyperbolic function of the form: a coth -1n + b where a and b are independent of n. Further, assuming ∈ is the acceptable loss tolerance, statistical regression shows that b is a linear function of mean and log ( ∈ ), while a is a polynomial in log( ∈ ). The capacity assignment problem is further augmented with a scheduling algorithm that is an extension of the Virtual Clock Algorithm. The new algorithm belongs to a class of algorithms which we refer to as Generalized Virtual Clock (GVC) algorithms. The particular GVC algorithm investigated in this paper estimates the instantaneous rate of transmission of each source, and uses the estimate instead of the static average rates, for prioritizing packets. In so doing, it attempts to synchronize the switch scheduling rates and the packet arrival rates of each source, and improves upon the spatial loss distribution characteristics of Virtual Clock. The combined allocation and scheduling algorithms are proposed as means for guaranteeing Quality of Service in high speed networks

Variable bit rate video time-series and scene modeling using discrete-time statistically self-similar systems

This thesis investigates the application of discrete-time statistically self-similar (DTSS) systems to modeling of variable bit rate (VBR) video traffic data. The work is motivated by the fact that while VBR video has been characterized as self-similar by various researchers, models based on self-similarity considerations have not been previously studied. Given the relationship between self-similarity and long-range dependence the potential for using DTSS model in applications involving modeling of VBR MPEG video traffic data is presented. This thesis initially explores the characteristic properties of the model and then establishes relationships between the discrete-time self-similar model and fractional order transfer function systems. Using white noise as the input, the modeling approach is presented using least-square fitting technique of the output autocorrelations to the correlations of various VBR video trace sequences. This measure is used to compare the model performance with the performance of other existing models such as Markovian, long-range dependent and M/G/(infinity) . The study shows that using heavy-tailed inputs the output of these models can be used to match both the scene time-series correlations as well as scene density functions. Furthermore, the discrete-time self-similar model is applied to scene classification in VBR MPEG video to provide a demonstration of potential application of discrete-time self-similar models in modeling self-similar and long-range dependent data. Simulation results have shown that the proposed modeling technique is indeed a better approach than several earlier approaches and finds application is areas such as automatic scene classification, estimation of motion intensity and metadata generation for MPEG-7 applications

Transmission of variable bit rate video over an Orwell ring

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is fast emerging as the preferred information transfer technique for future Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (BISON), offering the advantages of both the simplicity of time division circuit switched techniques and the flexibility of packet switched techniques. ATM networks with their inherent rate flexibility offer new opportunities for the efficient transmission of real time Variable Bit Rate (VBR) services over such networks. Since most services are VBR in nature when efficiently coded, this could in turn lead to a more efficient utilisation of network resources through statistical multiplexing. Video communication is typical of such a service and could benefit significantly if supported with VBR video over ATM networks. [Continues.

Video traffic modeling and delivery

Video is becoming a major component of the network traffic, and thus there has been a great interest to model video traffic. It is known that video traffic possesses short range dependence (SRD) and long range dependence (LRD) properties, which can drastically affect network performance. By decomposing a video sequence into three parts, according to its motion activity, Markov-modulated self-similar process model is first proposed to capture autocorrelation function (ACF) characteristics of MPEG video traffic. Furthermore, generalized Beta distribution is proposed to model the probability density functions (PDFs) of MPEG video traffic. It is observed that the ACF of MPEG video traffic fluctuates around three envelopes, reflecting the fact that different coding methods reduce the data dependency by different amount. This observation has led to a more accurate model, structurally modulated self-similar process model, which captures the ACF of the traffic, both SRD and LRD, by exploiting the MPEG structure. This model is subsequently simplified by simply modulating three self-similar processes, resulting in a much simpler model having the same accuracy as the structurally modulated self-similar process model. To justify the validity of the proposed models for video transmission, the cell loss ratios (CLRs) of a server with a limited buffer size driven by the empirical trace are compared to those driven by the proposed models. The differences are within one order, which are hardly achievable by other models, even for the case of JPEG video traffic. In the second part of this dissertation, two dynamic bandwidth allocation algorithms are proposed for pre-recorded and real-time video delivery, respectively. One is based on scene change identification, and the other is based on frame differences. The proposed algorithms can increase the bandwidth utilization by a factor of two to five, as compared to the constant bit rate (CBR) service using peak rate assignment

Performance analysis of an ATM network with multimedia traffic: a simulation study

Traffic and congestion control are important in enabling ATM networks to maintain the Quality of Service (QoS) required by end users. A Call Admission Control (CAC) strategy ensures that the network has sufficient resources available at the start of each call, but this does not prevent a traffic source from violating the negotiated contract. A policing strategy (User Parameter Control (UPC)) is also required to enforce the negotiated rates for a particular connection and to protect conforming users from network overload. The aim of this work is to investigate traffic policing and bandwidth management at the User to Network Interface (UNI). A policing function is proposed which is based on the leaky bucket (LB) which offers improved performance for both real time (RT) traffic such as speech and video and non-real time (non-RT) traffic, mainly data by taking into account the QoS requirements. A video cell in violation of the negotiated bit rate causes the remainder of the slice to be discarded. This 'tail clipping' provides protection for the decoder from damaged video slices. Speech cells are coded using a frequency domain coder, which places the most significant bits of a double speech sample into a high priority cell and the least significant bits into a high priority cell. In the case of congestion, the low priority cell can be discarded with little impact on the intelligibility of the received speech. However, data cells require loss-free delivery and are buffered rather than being discarded or tagged for subsequent deletion. This triple strategy is termed the super leaky bucket (SLB). Separate queues for RT and non-RT traffic, are also proposed at the multiplexer, with non pre-emptive priority service for RT traffic if the queue exceeds a predetermined threshold. If the RT queue continues to grow beyond a second threshold, then all low priority cells (mainly speech) are discarded. This scheme protects non-RT traffic from being tagged and subsequently discarded, by queueing the cells and also by throttling back non-RT sources during periods of congestion. It also prevents the RT cells from being delayed excessively in the multiplexer queue. A simulation model has been designed and implemented to test the proposal. Realistic sources have been incorporated into the model to simulate the types of traffic which could be expected on an ATM network. The results show that the S-LB outperforms the standard LB for video cells. The number of cells discarded and the resulting number of damaged video slices are significantly reduced. Dual queues with cyclic service at the multiplexer also reduce the delays experienced by RT cells. The QoS for all categories of traffic is preserved