A Network Algorithm for 3D/2D IPTV Distribution using WiMAX and WLAN Technologies

The final publication is available at link.springer.comThe appearance of new broadband wireless technologies jointly with the ability to offer enough quality of service to provide IPTV over them, have made possible the mobility and ubiquity of any type of device to access the IPTV network. The minimum bandwidth required in the access network to provide appropriate quality 3D/2D IPTV services jointly with the need to guarantee the Quality of Experience (QoE) to the end user, makes the need of algorithms that should be able to combine different wireless standards and technologies. In this paper, we propose a network algorithm that manages the IPTV access network and decides which type of wireless technology the customers should connect with when using multiband devices, depending on the requirements of the IPTV client device, the available networks, and some network parameters (such as the number of loss packets and packet delay), to provide the maximum QoE to the customer. The measurements taken in a real environment from several wireless networks allow us to know the performance of the proposed system when it selects each one of them. The measurements taken from a test bench demonstrate the success of our system.This work has been partially supported by the Polytechnic University of Valencia, though the PAID-15-10 multidisciplinary projects, by the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Next Generation Networks and Applications Group (NetGNA), Portugal, and by National Funding from the FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia through the PEst-OE/EEI/LA0008/2011 Project.Lloret, J.; Cánovas Solbes, A.; Rodrigues, JJPC.; Lin, K. (2013). A Network Algorithm for 3D/2D IPTV Distribution using WiMAX and WLAN Technologies. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 67(1):7-30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-011-0929-4S730671Abukharis S, MacKenzie R, Farrell TO (2009) Improving QoS of Video Transmitted Over 802.11 WLANs Using Frame Aggregation. 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Contribution to quality of user experience provision over wireless networks

The widespread expansion of wireless networks has brought new attractive possibilities to end users. In addition to the mobility capabilities provided by unwired devices, it is worth remarking the easy configuration process that a user has to follow to gain connectivity through a wireless network. Furthermore, the increasing bandwidth provided by the IEEE 802.11 family has made possible accessing to high-demanding services such as multimedia communications. Multimedia traffic has unique characteristics that make it greatly vulnerable against network impairments, such as packet losses, delay, or jitter. Voice over IP (VoIP) communications, video-conference, video-streaming, etc., are examples of these high-demanding services that need to meet very strict requirements in order to be served with acceptable levels of quality. Accomplishing these tough requirements will become extremely important during the next years, taking into account that consumer video traffic will be the predominant traffic in the Internet during the next years. In wired systems, these requirements are achieved by using Quality of Service (QoS) techniques, such as Differentiated Services (DiffServ), traffic engineering, etc. However, employing these methodologies in wireless networks is not that simple as many other factors impact on the quality of the provided service, e.g., fading, interferences, etc. Focusing on the IEEE 802.11g standard, which is the most extended technology for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), it defines two different architecture schemes. On one hand, the infrastructure mode consists of a central point, which manages the network, assuming network controlling tasks such as IP assignment, routing, accessing security, etc. The rest of the nodes composing the network act as hosts, i.e., they send and receive traffic through the central point. On the other hand, the IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc configuration mode is less extended than the infrastructure one. Under this scheme, there is not a central point in the network, but all the nodes composing the network assume both host and router roles, which permits the quick deployment of a network without a pre-existent infrastructure. This type of networks, so called Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs), presents interesting characteristics for situations when the fast deployment of a communication system is needed, e.g., tactics networks, disaster events, or temporary networks. The benefits provided by MANETs are varied, including high mobility possibilities provided to the nodes, network coverage extension, or network reliability avoiding single points of failure. The dynamic nature of these networks makes the nodes to react to topology changes as fast as possible. Moreover, as aforementioned, the transmission of multimedia traffic entails real-time constraints, necessary to provide these services with acceptable levels of quality. For those reasons, efficient routing protocols are needed, capable of providing enough reliability to the network and with the minimum impact to the quality of the service flowing through the nodes. Regarding quality measurements, the current trend is estimating what the end user actually perceives when consuming the service. This paradigm is called Quality of user Experience (QoE) and differs from the traditional Quality of Service (QoS) approach in the human perspective given to quality estimations. In order to measure the subjective opinion that a user has about a given service, different approaches can be taken. The most accurate methodology is performing subjective tests in which a panel of human testers rates the quality of the service under evaluation. This approach returns a quality score, so-called Mean Opinion Score (MOS), for the considered service in a scale 1 - 5. This methodology presents several drawbacks such as its high expenses and the impossibility of performing tests at real time. For those reasons, several mathematical models have been presented in order to provide an estimation of the QoE (MOS) reached by different multimedia services In this thesis, the focus is on evaluating and understanding the multimedia-content transmission-process in wireless networks from a QoE perspective. To this end, firstly, the QoE paradigm is explored aiming at understanding how to evaluate the quality of a given multimedia service. Then, the influence of the impairments introduced by the wireless transmission channel on the multimedia communications is analyzed. Besides, the functioning of different WLAN schemes in order to test their suitability to support highly demanding traffic such as the multimedia transmission is evaluated. Finally, as the main contribution of this thesis, new mechanisms or strategies to improve the quality of multimedia services distributed over IEEE 802.11 networks are presented. Concretely, the distribution of multimedia services over ad-hoc networks is deeply studied. Thus, a novel opportunistic routing protocol, so-called JOKER (auto-adJustable Opportunistic acK/timEr-based Routing) is presented. This proposal permits better support to multimedia services while reducing the energy consumption in comparison with the standard ad-hoc routing protocols.Universidad Politécnica de CartagenaPrograma Oficial de Doctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicacione

WiLiTV: A Low-Cost Wireless Framework for Live TV Services

With the evolution of HDTV and Ultra HDTV, the bandwidth requirement for IP-based TV content is rapidly increasing. Consumers demand uninterrupted service with a high Quality of Experience (QoE). Service providers are constantly trying to differentiate themselves by innovating new ways of distributing content more efficiently with lower cost and higher penetration. In this work, we propose a cost-efficient wireless framework (WiLiTV) for delivering live TV services, consisting of a mix of wireless access technologies (e.g. Satellite, WiFi and LTE overlay links). In the proposed architecture, live TV content is injected into the network at a few residential locations using satellite dishes. The content is then further distributed to other homes using a house-to-house WiFi network or via an overlay LTE network. Our problem is to construct an optimal TV distribution network with the minimum number of satellite injection points, while preserving the highest QoE, for different neighborhood densities. We evaluate the framework using realistic time-varying demand patterns and a diverse set of home location data. Our study demonstrates that the architecture requires 75 - 90% fewer satellite injection points, compared to traditional architectures. Furthermore, we show that most cost savings can be obtained using simple and practical relay routing solutions

Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend

Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2011, nr 2

kwartalni

An improved medium access control protocol for real-time applications in WLANs and its firmware development

The IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), commonly known as Wi-Fi, has emerged as a popular internet access technology and researchers are continuously working on improvement of the quality of service (QoS) in WLAN by proposing new and efficient schemes. Voice and video over Internet Protocol (VVoIP) applications are becoming very popular in Wi-Fi enabled portable/handheld devices because of recent technological advancements and lower service costs. Different from normal voice and video streaming, these applications demand symmetric throughput for the upstream and downstream. Existing Wi-Fi standards are optimised for generic internet applications and fail to provide symmetric throughput due to traffic bottleneck at access points. Performance analysis and benchmarking is an integral part of WLAN research, and in the majority of the cases, this is done through computer simulation using popular network simulators such as Network Simulator ff 2 (NS-2) or OPNET. While computer simulation is an excellent approach for saving time and money, results generated from computer simulations do not always match practical observations. This is why, for proper assessment of the merits of a proposed system in WLAN, a trial on a practical hardware platform is highly recommended and is often a requirement. In this thesis work, with a view to address the abovementioned challenges for facilitating VoIP and VVoIP services over Wi-Fi, two key contributions are made: i) formulating a suitable medium access control (MAC) protocol to address symmetric traffic scenario and ii) firmware development of this newly devised MAC protocol for real WLAN hardware. The proposed solution shows signifocant improvements over existing standards by supporting higher number of stations with strict QoS criteria. The proposed hardware platform is available off-the-shelf in the market and is a cost effective way of generating and evaluating performance results on a hardware system