Adaptation Techniques for Ubiquitous Internet Multimedia

A major trend in the Internet today is the push for ubiquitous access to rich multimedia content. Achieving this goal requires the incorporation of adaptation techniques, which will transform the media into various formats, suitable for a variety of devices with diverse communication and presentation capabilities. In this survey, we present the categories of adaptation techniques focusing on their characteristics and potential. We analyze various schemes in order to evaluate their effectiveness, performance, complexity, and applicability. We then describe the adaptation policies, methods and mechanisms that they use, along with the supporting mechanisms that aim in increasing the efficiency of the adaptation process. Finally, we present several case studies, commercial approaches and current trends in the area of ubiquitous access to Internet multimedia content. 1