Wireless multimedia delivery over 802.11e with cross-layer optimization techniques

The use of wireless networks has spread further than simple data transfer to delay sensitive and loss tolerant multimedia applications. Over the past few years, wireless multimedia transmission across Wireless Local area Networks (WLANs) has gained a lot of attention because of the introduction of technologies such as Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11, 3G, and WiMAX. The IEEE 802.11 WLAN has become a dominating technology due to its low cost and ease of implementation. But, transmitting video over WLANs in real time remains a challenge because it imposes strong demands on video codec, the underlying network, and the Media Access Control (MAC) layer. This paper presents a cross-layer mapping algorithm to improve the quality of transmission of H.264 (a recently-developed video coding standard of the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group) video stream over IEEE 802.11e-based wireless networks. The major goals of H.264 standard were on improving the rate distortion and the enhanced compression performance. Our proposed cross-layer design involves the mapping of H.264 video slices (packets) to appropriate access categories of IEEE 802.11e according to their information significance. We evaluate the performance of our proposed cross-layer design and the results obtained demonstrate its effectiveness in exploiting characteristics of the MAC and application layers to improve the video transmission quality.     

A multi-layer experimental study of multimedia and QoS communication in wireless mesh networks

A significant issue in Mesh networks is to support multimedia transmissions while providing Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees to mobile users. For real-time multimedia streaming, unstable throughput or insufficient bandwidth will incur unexpected delay or jitter, and it remains difficult to provide comprehensive service guarantees for a wireless mesh environment. In this paper, we target the problem of providing multimedia QoS in wireless mesh networks. We design and implement a campus test-bed for supporting multimedia traffic in mobile wireless mesh networks, and investigate in detail some possible improvements on a number of layers to enable multimedia transmission over wireless networks with QoS support. We first study a number of improvements of some existing routing protocols to support multimedia transmissions. Some new admission control and rate control mechanisms are studied and their performance gains are verified in our experiments. In our new cross-layer adaptive rate control (CLARC) mechanism, we adaptively change the video encoder’s output bit rate based on the available network bandwidth to improve the quality of the received video. We also design a mobile gateway protocol to connect the MANET to Internet and a wireless LAN management protocol to automatically manage WLAN to provide some QoS.     

Providing MAC QoS for multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks

Ad hoc wireless networks with their widespread deployment, now need to support applications that generate multimedia and real-time traffic. Video, audio, real-time voice over IP, and other multimedia applications require the network to provide guarantees on the Quality of Service (QoS) of the connection. The 802.11e Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol was proposed with the aim of providing QoS support at the MAC layer. The 802.11e performs well in wireless LANs due to the presence of Access Points (APs), but in ad hoc networks, especially multi-hop ones, it is still incapable of supporting multimedia traffic.One of the most important QoS parameters for multimedia and real-time traffic is delay. Our primary goal is to reduce the end-to-end delay, thereby improving the Packet Delivery Ratio of multimedia traffic, that is, the proportion of packets that reach the destination within the deadline, in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.Our contribution is threefold: first we propose dynamic ReAllocative Priority (ReAP) scheme, wherein the priorities of packets in the MAC queues are not fixed, but keep changing dynamically. We use the laxity and the hop length information to decide the priority of the packet. ReAP improves the PDR by over 28% in comparison with 802.11e, especially under heavy loads. Second, we introduce Adaptive-TXOP (A-TXOP), where transmission opportunity (TXOP) is the time interval during which a node has the right to initiate transmissions. This scheme reduces the delay of video traffic by reducing the number of channel accesses required to transmit large video frames. It involves modifying the TXOP interval dynamically based on the packets in the queue, so that fragments of the same packet are sent in the same TXOP interval. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of video traffic. ReAP with A-TXOP helps in reducing the delay of video traffic by over 27% and further improves the quality of video in comparison with ReAP without A-TXOP. Finally, we have TXOP-sharing, which is aimed at reducing the delay of voice traffic. It involves using the TXOP to transmit to multiple receivers, in order to utilize the TXOP interval fully. It reduces the number of contentions to the channel and thereby reduces the delay of voice traffic by over 14%. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of voice traffic. The three schemes (ReAP, A-TXOP, and TXOP-sharing) work together to improve the performance of multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.     

Cross-Layer Packetization and Retransmission Strategies for Delay-Sensitive Wireless Multimedia Transmission

Existing wireless networks provide dynamically varying resources with only limited support for the quality of service required by the bandwidth-intense, loss-tolerant and delay-sensitive multimedia applications. This variability of resources does not significantly impact delay insensitive data transmission (e.g., file transfers), but has considerable consequences for multimedia applications. Recently, the research focus has been to adapt existing algorithms and protocols at the lower layers of the protocol stack to better support multimedia transmission applications and conversely, to modify application layer solutions to cope with the varying wireless networks resources. In this paper, we show that significant improvements in wireless multimedia performance can be obtained by deploying a joint application-layer adaptive packetization and prioritized scheduling and MAC-layer retransmission strategy. We deploy a state-of-the-art wavelet coder for the compression of the video data that enables on-the-fly adaptation to changing channel conditions and inherent prioritization of the video bitstream. We pose the cross-layer problem as a distortion minimization given delay constraints and derive analytical solutions by modifying existing joint source-channel coding theory aimed at fulfilling rate, rather than delay, constraints. We also propose real-time algorithms that explicitly consider the available information about previously transmitted packets. The obtained results show significant improvements in terms of video quality as opposed to ad-hoc optimizations currently deployed, while the complexity associated with performing this optimization in real time, i.e., at transmission time, is limited     

一种用于无线局域网可伸缩视频传输的跨层结构与SBED算法*

为了增强802.11e无线局域网上的视频传输质量,提出了一种跨层结构与自适应映射算法。将H.264可伸缩视频编码（SVC）的层次信息与802.11e MAC层的访问类（AC）相结合,基于重要性早期检测（SBED）策略将SVC数据包动态映射到合适的AC上,在基础层损失率与平均重要性损失度间实现良好的平衡。仿真表明,该方案的PSNR性能明显优于现有的静态与随机映射方案。     

一种无线实时流媒体增强型自适应FEC控制机制

无线网络动态的信道特性和带宽有限等特点,使得在无线环境下为流媒体应用提供QoS保证面临更大的挑战。提出一种用于无线实时流媒体传输的增强型自适应前向纠错控制策略,以提高接收方的播放质量。该策略采用跨层设计的方法,根据当前的网络状态,自适应地调整MPEG视频帧的发送速率,在视频源数据和冗余数据之间动态分配网络带宽。仿真结果表明,该策略能使接收方获得最大的可播放帧率,有效提高流媒体传输的可靠性和实时性。     

Adaptive hybrid error correction model for video streaming over wireless networks

The Hybrid ARQ (HARQ) mechanism is the well-known error packet recovery solution composed of the Automation Repeat reQuest (ARQ) mechanism and the Forward Error Correction (FEC) mechanism. However, the HARQ mechanism neither retransmits the packet to the receiver in time when the packet cannot be recovered by the FEC scheme nor dynamically adjusts the number of FEC redundant packets according to network conditions. In this paper, the Adaptive Hybrid Error Correction Model (AHECM) is proposed to improve the HARQ mechanism. The AHECM can limit the packet retransmission delay to the most tolerable end-to-end delay. Besides, the AHECM can find the appropriate FEC parameter to avoid network congestion and reduce the number of FEC redundant packets by predicting the effective packet loss rate. Meanwhile, when the end-to-end delay requirement can be met, the AHECM will only retransmit the necessary number of redundant FEC packets to receiver in comparison with legacy HARQ mechanisms. Furthermore, the AHECM can use an Unequal Error Protection to protect important multimedia frames against channel errors of wireless networks. Besides, the AHECM uses the Markov model to estimate the burst bit error condition over wireless networks. The AHECM is evaluated by several metrics such as the effective packet loss rate, the error recovery efficiency, the decodable frame rate, and the peak signal to noise ratio to verify the efficiency in delivering video streaming over wireless networks.     

Multimedia framework to support eHealth applications

Limited bandwidth resources lead to a number of challenges especially for eHealth applications, which are communicated over IP and wireless networks. These multimedia services include high-resolution videos and have very large file sizes that require a high level of compression to overcome this limitation. Therefore, there is an acute demand for the research community to provide an efficient multimedia framework to encode medical videos with high quality specifically under the conditions of an error-prone environment. Both an affordable delivery framework and effective coding techniques are extremely desirable for the delivery of high-quality eHealth video applications for transmission over heterogeneous networks and devices. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a multimedia framework to support eHealth applications, which has an improved coding scheme that uses an SVC-scalable extension of MPEC-4 AVC/H.264. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a significant improvement in terms of the PSNR-Y gain and reduces the picture quality degradation caused by artifacts and distortions, compared to the existing scheme.     

基于RTP的H.264视频流实时打包传输的研究

随着无线宽带网络的快速发展,以及高效的视频压缩技术的应用,流媒体的实时高效传输成为亟待解决的问题。本文从视频传输系统模型入手,分析了最新视频编码标准H.264在算法上的层次结构特点以及音、视频实时传送协议RTP的高效性。并且随着适合H.264流的RTP载荷格式的提出,基于RTP的H.264流媒体无线传输渐渐地得到应用。本文成功实现了一种基于RTP的H.264传输算法,实验通过了TD330无线3G模块测试,并且获得良好的图像质量,实现了低时延、较小丢包率的打包算法。     

Header Detection to Improve Multimedia Quality Over Wireless Networks

Wireless multimedia studies have revealed that forward error correction (FEC) on corrupted packets yields better bandwidth utilization and lower delay than retransmissions. To facilitate FEC-based recovery, corrupted packets should not be dropped so that maximum number of packets is relayed to a wireless receiver's FEC decoder. Previous studies proposed to mitigate wireless packet drops by a partial checksum that ignored payload errors. Such schemes require modifications to both transmitters and receivers, and incur packet-losses due to header errors. In this paper, we introduce a receiver-based scheme which uses the history of active multimedia sessions to detect transmitted values of corrupted packet headers, thereby improving wireless multimedia throughput. Header detection is posed as the decision-theoretic problem of multihypothesis detection of known parameters in noise. Performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using trace-driven video simulations on an 802.11b local area network. We show that header detection with application layer FEC provides significant throughput and video quality improvements over the conventional UDP/IP/802.11 protocol stack     

无线多媒体传感器网络并发传输性能建模及实验评估

针对无线多媒体传感器网络（wireless multimedia sensor network,WMSN）在多路视频并发传输性能方面缺乏定量化评估的问题,对WMSN的并发性能进行了建模分析与实验验证．首先利用排队论和概率论原理构造了一个基于IEEE 802.11的WMSN数据链路层延迟模型,为实验提供理论依据．而后实验测量了基于IEEE 802.11的WMSN在不同网络拓扑下,不同因素（如距离、跳数、并发视频数）对视频评价指标（延迟、抖动、信道利用率）的影响．理论及实验结果表明,IEEE 802.11协议仅能支持四路以下视频并发传输,不适合高并发视频传输,亟待开展WMSN专属协议及算法的研究．     

无线Mesh网络中VOIP的QoS性能分析

针对VoIP(Voice over IP)业务在无线Mesh网上进行传输时存在服务质量(QoS)需求难以保证、带宽利用率低的问题,介绍了VoIP的QoS影响因素,分析了端到端时延、时延抖动和丢包率等几个重要参数,并对VoIP在无线Mesh网中的传输性能进行了论述。提出了基于无线Mesh网络的QoS保证机制,可以为端到端的数据传输公平的分配带宽,并能在保证QoS下实现大规模的实时任务的多跳转发。仿真试验表明能有效降低端到端时延,有着更好的QoS性能。     

无线Mesh网络中的P2P流媒体性能评估

通过搭建基于无线Mesh网络的P2P流媒体点播测试平台,对影响无线Mesh网络中P2P流媒体性能的流媒体编解码方式、编码速率、数据转发路径的选择和跳数四个因素进行了测试。实验结果表明,采用H.264编解码标准更适合无线Mesh网络中流媒体的传输;编码速率必须不大于网络连接速率才能获得高视频质量;P2P技术可以抵抗10%的丢包对视频质量的影响,比采用非P2P技术在视频的前1 000帧视频质量平均高出3 dB;由于P2P技术带来的流间干扰的影响使得1 000帧以后视频质量下降了6 dB,严重影响了流媒体性能;无线Mesh网络的传输能力随着跳数的增加而减弱,但是流媒体质量并未随着跳数的增加而降低。     

Channel adaptive video stream switching for broadband wireless links

This paper exploits an H.264/Advanced Video Coding codec’s smooth stream switching to achieve robust video delivery across an IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) broadband wireless link. As the wireless channel conditions vary over time, dynamic selection of bitrate and corresponding video quality will reduce the risk of harmful packet loss. The paper investigates choice of stream-switching with Secondary SP-frames or SI-frames relative to the selection of quantization parameter (QP) values. To control the switching points at the WiMAX server, the proposed scheme applies a feedback mechanism that monitors packet loss. As an additional suggestion, the paper considers an adaptive ARQ scheme to protect switching frames against packet loss. In summary, the broadband wireless streaming system gives more protection to higher quality video, reduces delay and packet loss, and improves received video quality. In particular, for the QP values selected, results show that increased quality primary-switching frames together with SI frames bring a significant gain in video quality compared with other switching schemes with secondary SP-frames. The other schemes in turn show an improvement to using ‘no switching’ when streaming takes place over a typical WiMAX channel with burst errors. Link delay is also reduced.     

Wireless MediaNets: application-driven next-generation wireless IP networks

Thanks to the explosive creation of multimedia contents, the pervasive adoption of multimedia coding standards and the ubiquitous access of multimedia services, multimedia networking is everywhere in our daily lives. Unfortunately, the existing best effort IP network infrastructure, originally designed with little real-time QoS requirement, has started to suffer from performance degradation on emerging multimedia networking applications. This inadequacy problem is further deepened by the prevalence of last/first-mile wireless networking, such as Wi-Fi, mobile WiMAX, and many wireless sensors and ad-hoc networks. This can be evidenced by more and more fragmentation of application-driven IP-based networks, such as for power grid distribution, networked security surveillance, intelligent transportation communication, and many other sensor networks. To overcome the QoS challenges, the next generation wireless IP networks have to be architected in a top-down manner, i.e., application-driven layered protocol design. More specifically, based on the application media data, compression schemes are applied, the subsequent Network, MAC- and PHY-layered protocols need to be accordingly or jointly enhanced to reach the optimal performance. This is the fundamental concept behind the design of Wireless MediaNets. In this survey paper, I will address the QoS challenges specifically encountered in video over heterogeneous wireless broadband networks and address several application-driven Wireless MediaNet solutions based on effective cross-layer integration of APP and MAC/PHY layers. More specifically, the congestion control for achieving airtime fairness of video streaming to maximize the link adaptation performance of Wi-Fi, the minimum latency event-driven data exchange for distributed wireless ad-hoc sensor networks, and the opportunistic multicast of scalable video live streaming over mobile WiMAX.     

Dynamic duty cycle and adaptive contention window based QoS-MAC protocol for wireless multimedia sensor networks

Rapid penetration of small, customized wireless devices and enormous growth of wireless communication technologies has already set the stage for large-scale deployment of wireless sensor networks. While the need to minimize the energy consumption has driven significant researches in wireless sensor networks, offering some precise quality of service (QoS) for multimedia transmission over sensor networks has not received significant attention. However, the emerging new applications like video surveillance, telemedicine and traffic monitoring needs transmission of wireless multimedia over sensor networks. Naturally, offering some better QoS for wireless multimedia over sensor networks raises significant challenges. The network needs to cope up with battery-constraints, while providing improved QoS (end-to-end delay and bandwidth requirement). This calls for a suitable sensory MAC protocol capable of achieving application-specific QoS. In this paper, we have proposed a new QoS-based sensory MAC protocol, which not only adapts to application-oriented QoS, but also attempts to conserve energy without violating QoS-constraints. Performance modeling, analysis and simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is capable of providing lower delay and better throughput, at the cost of reasonable energy consumption, in comparison to other existing sensory MAC protocols.     

H.264 video transmissions over wireless networks: Challenges and solutions

Multimedia video streaming is becoming increasingly popular. Using multimedia services, there are more and more users in end-system over wireless networking environment. H.264/AVC is now the standard for video streaming because of its high compression efficiency, robustness against errors and network-friendly features. However, providing the desired quality of service or improving the transmission efficiency for H.264 video transmissions over wireless networks present numbers of challenges. In this paper, we consider those challenges and survey existing mechanisms based on the protocol layers they work on. Finally, we address some open research issues concerning for H.264 video transmission in wireless networks.     

认知无线网络中的轻量级物理层辅助认证

由于无线信道的开放性和无线传输的广播特性,认知无线网络很容易遭受消息篡改、伪造、窃听以及拒绝服务等攻击.为了抵抗这些攻击,研究人员提出了许多物理层认证技术.相比于传统的密码学认证机制,物理层认证技术更快速、更高效.因此非常适用于对认知无线网络中资源受限的终端进行连续、实时的认证.但现有的物理层认证技术无法实现初始认证,而且在认证过程中丢包事件时常发生,导致认证时延较长,认证效率较低.本文将传统密码学认证技术与物理层认证技术相结合,提出一种轻量级的跨层认证方案.该方案只在初次认证采用密码学技术,其余认证采用快速高效的物理层认证技术,提高了认证效率.本文方案采用改进的归一化统计量,使得门限的计算变得更为简单,有效地降低了计算复杂度,减少了用户的认证等待时延.此外,本文采用了基于哈希链的认证方法,保证了在丢包情况下仍能实现连续的认证.性能分析表明,与现有的方案相比,本文的方案在提高认证效率方面具有较大的优势.     

An Integrated Framework for Efficient Transport of Real-Time MPEG Video over ATM Best Effort Service

This paper describes a framework for the transport of real-time multimedia traffic generated by MPEG-2 applications over ATM networks using an enhanced UBR best effort service (UBR+). Based on the factors affecting the picture quality during transmission, we propose an efficient and cost-effective ATM best effort delivery service. The proposed framework integrates three major components: 1) a dynamic frame-level priority assignment mechanism based on MPEG data structure and feedback from the network (DexPAS), 2) a novel audio-visual AAL5 SSCS with FEC (AV-SSCS), and 3) an intelligent packet video discard scheme named FEC-PSD, which adaptively and selectively adjusts cell drop levels to switch buffer occupancy, video cell payload type and forward error correction capability of the destination. The overall best-effort video delivery framework is evaluated using ATM network simulation and MPEG2 video traces. The ultimate goal of this framework is twofold: First, minimizing loss of critical video data with bounded end-to-end delay for arriving cells and second, reducing the bad throughput crossing the network during congestion. Compared to previous approaches, performance evaluation shows a good protection of Predictive coded (P-) and Bi-directional Predictive coded (B-) frames at the MPEG video slice layer.     

基于冗余小波变换的可扩展视频多描述编码

视频图像信息在不可靠信道上传输将引起丢包、误码以及延时等现象,严重影响了重建视频图像的质量;另外,在网络带宽、信道条件以及用户需求不同的传输环境下,迫切希望对视频图像进行可扩展性编码。将多描述编码技术与视频小波技术相结合,提出了一种新的视频编码方法,为解决上述问题提供一种新途径,实验仿真结果说明了这一方法的可行性与有效性。