Intelligent distributed multimedia collection: content aggregation and integration

People's multimedia content is spread around their home network and content services on the Internet, such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook. In this paper we present a system that aggregates all the multimedia content of the end user and integrates it into a unified collection for the user's convenience. The system provides location transparency of multimedia content, content filtering on player compatibility and metadata completion to aid in improved usability. This effectively enables the user to rediscover his multimedia collection without any technical knowledge. A proof-of-concept implementation known as Intelligent Distributed Multimedia Collection (IDMC) has been made that is able to detect and browse UPnP MediaServer devices as well as collect information from YouTube. This implementation also contains a media player and is able to control UPnP MediaRenderer devices remotely. Furthermore, performance has been measured to assess different ways of iterating through a multimedia collection

Integrating personal media and digital TV with QoS guarantees using virtualized set-top boxes: architecture and performance measurements

Nowadays, users consume a lot of functionality in their home coming from a service provider located in the Internet. While the home network is typically shielded off as much as possible from the `outside world', the supplied services could be greatly extended if it was possible to use local information. In this article, an extended service is presented that integrates the user's multimedia content, scattered over multiple devices in the home network, into the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) of the Digital TV. We propose to virtualize the set-top box, by migrating all functionality except user interfacing to the service provider infrastructure. The media in the home network is discovered through standard Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), of which the QoS functionality is exploited to ensure high quality playback over the home network, that basically is out of the control of the service provider. The performance of the subsystems are analysed

Enhancing UPnP Quality of Service by Intelligent Access Point

[[abstract]]With the process of wireless local area networks (WLANs), the concept of digital home gradually plays an important role nowadays. For this reason, a standard called UPnP, one of the future trends, is proposed. UPnP provides many important functions, for example, active detection, zero-configuration, etc. The problems about the distribution of total bandwidth and QoS become more complicated since multiple services (e.g., Ftp, Streaming, VoIP) activate simultaneously. Under the architecture of UPnP QoS, we enhance and apply it to Intelligent Access Point (IAP) to redefine a new UPnP QoS architecture in our paper, and combine our UPnP QoS algorithm to proceed predation and distribution algorithm about the total bandwidth. In this paper, the IAP and users are permitted to do active detection and can adjust actively to get a better QoS. Finally, our simulation results reveal that the total bandwidth can be used in a more efficient way which means that out proposed scheme can always service more new coming users.[[conferencetype]]國際[[conferencedate]]20101015~20101017[[iscallforpapers]]Y[[conferencelocation]]Darmstadt, German

Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey

The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data. In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects. This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268, Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017

Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey

The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data. In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects. This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268, Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017

Smart home interoperability: the DomoEsi project approach

The home automation market is characterized by the great number of systems available to the end user. The recent bubble in the building industry made the situation even worse due to the birth of new proprietary systems. The success of the digital home concept depends on the ease of integration between home automation systems and other consumer electronic equipment pre-existing in the home. In this paper the interoperability issue is addressed and the approach followed in the project DomoEsi is presented

OMUS : an optimized multimedia service for the home environment

Media content in home environments is often scattered across multiple devices in the home network. As both the available multimedia devices in the home (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, game consoles, etc.) and the available content (video and audio) is increasing, interconnecting desired content with available devices is becoming harder and home users are experiencing difficulties in selecting interesting content for their current context. In this paper, we start with an analysis of the home environment by means of a user study. Information handling problems are identified and requirements for a home information system formulated. To meet these requirements we propose the OMUS home information system which includes an optimized content aggregation framework, a hybrid group-based contextual recommender system, and an overall web-based user interface making both content and recommendations available for all devices across the home network. For the group recommendations we introduced distinct weights for each user and showed that by varying the weights, the coverage (i.e., items that can be returned by the recommender) considerably increases. Also the addition of genre filter functionality was proven to further boost the coverage. The OMUS system was evaluated by means of focus groups and by qualitative and quantitative performance assessment of individual parts of the system. The modularity of internal components and limited imposed hardware requirements implies flexibility as to how the OMUS system can be deployed (ranging from e.g., embedded in hardware devices or more software services based)

Semantically enabling UPnP Networks of Multimedia Home Content

There is plenty of multimedia content available in our homes, stored in multimedia disk drives, personal computers, or digital cameras. Protocols like Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) allow sharing this content among storage devices and displaying them in multimedia renderers in the local area networks of our homes. However, UPnP does not provide native support for the exchange of resources across homes neither does it provide means to describe multimedia content so as to facilitate search across multimedia resources. In this paper we describe a set of extensions to the UPnP protocol to provide a uniform access to multimedia content belonging to different homes, as well as mechanisms to create tag-based and ontology-based metadata, allowing search and Linked-Data publishing of these multimedia resources

Context-aware management of multi-device services in the home

MPhilMore and more functionally complex digital consumer devices are becoming embedded or scattered throughout the home, networked in a piecemeal fashion and supporting more ubiquitous device services. For example, activities such as watching a home video may require video to be streamed throughout the home and for multiple devices to be orchestrated and coordinated, involving multiple user interactions via multiple remote controls. The main aim of this project is to research and develop a service-oriented multidevice framework to support user activities in the home, easing the operation and management of multi-device services though reducing explicit user interaction. To do this, user contexts i.e., when and where a user activity takes place, and device orchestration using pre-defined rules, are being utilised. A service-oriented device framework has been designed in four phases. First, a simple framework is designed to utilise OSGi and UPnP functionality in order to orchestrate simple device operation involving device discovery and device interoperability. Second, the framework is enhanced by adding a dynamic user interface portal to access virtual orchestrated services generated through combining multiple devices. Third the framework supports context-based device interaction and context-based task initiation. Context-aware functionality combines information received from several sources such as from sensors that can sense the physical and user environment, from user-device interaction and from user contexts derived from calendars. Finally, the framework supports a smart home SOA lifecycle using pre-defined rules, a rule engine and workflows