Implementation of 4kUHD HEVC-content transmission

The Internet of things (IoT) has received a great deal of attention in recent years, and is still being approached with a wide range of views. At the same time, video data now accounts for over half of the internet traffic. With the current availability of beyond high definition, it is worth understanding the performance effects, especially for real-time applications. High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) aims to provide reduction in bandwidth utilisation while maintaining perceived video quality in comparison with its predecessor codecs. Its adoption aims to provide for areas such as television broadcast, multimedia streaming/storage, and mobile communications with significant improvements. Although there have been attempts at HEVC streaming, the literature/implementations offered do not take into consideration changes in the HEVC specifications. Beyond this point, it seems little research exists on real-time HEVC coded content live streaming. Our contribution fills this current gap in enabling compliant and real-time networked HEVC visual applications. This is done implementing a technique for real-time HEVC encapsulation in MPEG-2 Transmission Stream (MPEG-2 TS) and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), thereby removing the need for multi-platform clients to receive and decode HEVC streams. It is taken further by evaluating the transmission of 4k UHDTV HEVC-coded content in a typical wireless environment using both computers and mobile devices, while considering well-known factors such as obstruction, interference and other unseen factors that affect the network performance and video quality. Our results suggest that 4kUHD can be streamed at 13.5 Mb/s, and can be delivered to multiple devices without loss in perceived quality

IEEE 802.11ac wireless delivery of 4kUHD video: The impact of packet loss

This paper examines the 4kUHD video quality from streaming over an IEEE 802.11ac wireless channel, given measured levels of packet loss. Findings suggest that there is a strong content dependency to loss impact upon video quality but that, for short-range transmission, the quality is acceptable, making 4kUHD feasible on head-mounted displays

Prospects for live higher resolution video streaming to mobile devices: achievable quality across wireless links

From a review of the literature and a range of experiments, this paper demonstrates that live video streaming to mobile devices with pixel resolutions from Standard Definition up to 4k Ultra High Definition (UHD) is now becoming feasible by means of high-throughput IEEE 802.11ad at 60 GHz or 802.11ac at 5 GHz, and 4kUHD streaming is even possible with 802.11n operating at 5 GHz. The paper, by a customized implementation, also shows that real-time compression, assisted by Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) at 4kUHD, is also becoming feasible. The paper further considers the impact of packet loss on H.264/AVC and HEVC codec compressed video streams in terms of Structural Similarity (SSIM) index video quality. It additionally gives an indication of wireless network latencies and currently feasible frame rates. Findings suggest that, for medium-range transmission, the video quality may be acceptable at low packet loss rates. For hardware-accelerated 4kUHD encoding, standard frame rates may be possible but appropriate higher frame rates are only just being reached in hardware implementations. The target bitrate was found to be important in determining the display quality, which depends on the coding complexity of the video content. Higher compressed bitrates are recommended, as video quality may improve disproportionately as a result

Fuzzy logic inference system-based hybrid quality prediction model for wireless 4kUHD H.265-coded video streaming

Networked visual applications such video streaming have grown exponentially in recent years, yet are known to be sensitive to network impairments. However, available measurement techniques that adopt a full reference model are impractical in real-time streaming because they require the original video sequence available at the receivers side. The primary aim of this study is to present a hybrid no-reference prediction model for the perceptual quality of 4kUHD H.265-coded video in the wireless domain. The contributions of this paper are two-fold: first, an investigation of the impact of quality of service (QoS) parameters on 4kUHD H.265-coded video transmission in an experimental environment; second, objective model based on fuzzy logic inference system is developed to predict the visual quality by mapping QoS parameters to the measured quality of experience. The model is evaluated in contrast to random neural networks. The results show that good prediction accuracy was obtained from the proposed hybrid prediction model. This study will help in the development of a reference-free video quality prediction model and QoS control methods for 4kUHD video streaming

Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Quality prediction model for wireless 4kUHD H.265-coded video streaming

This paper proposes a prediction model for the perceptual quality of wireless 4kUHD H.265 video streaming. Based on Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic System (IT2FLS), the model exploits application and physical layer parameters. The results show that good prediction accuracy was obtained from the proposed prediction model. This study should help in the development of a reference-free video quality prediction model and QoS control methods for 4kUHD video streaming

Subjective evaluation of visual quality and simulator sickness of short 360 videos: ITU-T Rec. P.919

Recently an impressive development in immersive technologies, such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and 360 video, has been witnessed. However, methods for quality assessment have not been keeping up. This paper studies quality assessment of 360 video from the cross-lab tests (involving ten laboratories and more than 300 participants) carried out by the Immersive Media Group (IMG) of the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG). These tests were addressed to assess and validate subjective evaluation methodologies for 360 video. Audiovisual quality, simulator sickness symptoms, and exploration behavior were evaluated with short (from 10 seconds to 30 seconds) 360 sequences. The following factors' influences were also analyzed: assessment methodology, sequence duration, Head-Mounted Display (HMD) device, uniform and non-uniform coding degradations, and simulator sickness assessment methods. The obtained results have demonstrated the validity of Absolute Category Rating (ACR) and Degradation Category Rating (DCR) for subjective tests with 360 videos, the possibility of using 10-second videos (with or without audio) when addressing quality evaluation of coding artifacts, as well as any commercial HMD (satisfying minimum requirements). Also, more efficient methods than the long Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) have been proposed to evaluate related symptoms with 360 videos. These results have been instrumental for the development of the ITU-T Recommendation P.919. Finally, the annotated dataset from the tests is made publicly available for the research community

CHARISMA: Converged heterogeneous advanced 5G cloud-RAN architecture for intelligent and secure media access

5G networks aims to tackle the complex demands of emerging business paradigms, such as Smart Cities, eHealth, and Industry 4.0. In this paper, a hierarchical, distributed-intelligence 5G architecture is described, offering low latency, security, and open access as features intrinsic to its design. SDN and NFV principles are employed to create a networking solution applicable to a large number of high-specification 5G use case scenarios