A user-centric network communication broker for multimedia collaborative computing

The development of collaborative multimedia applications today follows a vertical development approach, where each application is built on top of low-level network abstractions such as the socket interface. This stovepipe development process is a major inhibitor that drives up the cost of development and slows down the innovation pace of new generations of communication applications. In this paper, we propose a network communication broker (NCB) that provides a unified higher-level abstraction for the class of multimedia collaborative applications. We demonstrate how NCB encapsulates the complexity of network-level communication control and media delivery, and expedites the development of applications with various communication logics. We investigate the minimum necessary requirements for the NCB abstraction. We identify that the concept of user-level sessions involving multiple parties and multiple media, is critical to designing a reusable NCB to facilitate next-generation multimedia communications. Furthermore, the internal design of NCB decouples the user-level sessions from network-level sessions, so that the NCB framework can accommodate heterogeneous networks, and applications can be easily ported to new network environments. In addition, we demonstrate how the extensible and self-managing design of NCB supports dynamic adaptation in response to changes in network conditions and user requirements.     

A preemptive channel allocation scheme for multimedia traffic in mobile wireless networks

This paper presents a channel allocation model with both partial and full preemptive capabilities for multimedia traffic in mobile wireless networks. The different types of multimedia traffic in transmitting through next-generation networks possess different characteristics and demand an adequate channel allocation scheme to fulfill individual Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. In the proposed model, multimedia traffic is classified into three classes corresponding to different priority levels in a decreasing order. To effectively reduce the dropping probability, a higher-priority handoff call is allowed to fully or partially preempt any lower-priority ongoing calls when the channel capacity becomes insufficient. In addition, to prevent from possible starvation of the lowest-priority traffic, a portion of system channels are purposely reserved. Performance measures, including the dropping probability of handoff calls, the call-interruption probability that an ongoing call is forced to termination due to full preemption, and the bandwidth reduction ratio due to partial preemption, are investigated through an analytical model built with 4-D Markov chains. The numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.     

A dynamic channel reservation method for multimedia streaming in Wi-Fi Mesh networks

To improve data transmission robustness in the Wi-Fi Mesh standard, a deterministic channel access method was added to the basic random access method, which enabled the stations to get a contention-free access in the previously reserved time intervals. This mechanism can be conveniently used for transmission of the real-time multimedia streams which require quality-of-service support. However, the packet transmission in the reserved time intervals is affected by random noise and interference, and the time-consuming reservation procedure does not allow one to change on-the-fly the amount of reserved channel resources. A method for dynamic channel reservation which takes into account these aspects of the deterministic channel access mechanism and meets the quality-of-service requirements was proposed.     

适合于移动多媒体网络的呼叫接纳控制算法

移动多媒体网络应该能够同时支持传统的数据业务和实时交互式多媒体业务,并能够为用户提供QoS保证.在无线移动网中提供QoS保证,呼叫接纳控制扮演着重要的角色.通过对呼叫接纳算法中资源预留方案进行了分析总结,提出了一种适合于移动多媒体网络的自适应呼叫接纳控制算法.     

无线多媒体传感器网络图像通信性能分析

对无线视频传感器节点的图像通信活动进行研究,分析了其在资源受限的无线多媒体传感器网络中进行图像编码和传输的性能。对基于DCT和DWT的图像编码与传输的能量消耗和率失真进行建模分析。根据所建立的能量消耗与率失真模型,对有限的能量和传输带宽进行优化分配。根据监测场景的统计信息,调整编码中所使用的参数,以使得能量消耗最小化。仿真实验结果表明,所提出的方法在保证应用所需图像质量的情况,有效地降低了无线传感器节点的数据通信量和计算过程的能耗。     

Infopipes: An abstraction for multimedia streaming

To simplify the task of building distributed streaming applications, we propose a new abstraction for information flow – Infopipes. Infopipes make information flow primary, not an auxiliary mechanism that is hidden away. Systems are built by connecting predefined component Infopipes such as sources, sinks, buffers, filters, broadcasting pipes, and multiplexing pipes. The goal of Infopipes is not to hide communication, like an RPC system, but to reify it: to represent communication explicitly as objects that the program can interrogate and manipulate. Moreover, these objects represent communication in application-level terms, not in terms of network or process implementation.     

High level communication functionalities for wireless sensor networks

In this paper we show how to establish a reliable and efficient high level communication system in a randomly deployed network of sensors equipped with directional antennas. This high level communication system enables the programming of the sensor network using high level communication functionalities without the burden of taking care of their physical capacities (low range, unidirectional links, single frequency, presence of collisions, etc.). The high level communication functionalities we offer include point-to-point communication, point-to-area communication, and one-to-all communication. The basic idea to implement this system is to simulate a virtual network that emerges from the ad-hoc network using self-organization, self-discovery and collaborative methods. We also analyse the efficiency, scalability and robustness of the proposed protocols.     

Class-specific quality of service guarantees in multimedia communication networks

We consider the problem of quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning in modern high-speed, multimedia, communication networks. We quantify QoS by the probabilities of loss and excessive delay of an arbitrary packet, and introduce the model of a multiclass node (switch) which provides network access to users that may belong to multiple service classes. We treat such a node as a stochastic system which we analyze and control. In particular, we develop an analytical approach to estimate both the delay and the buffer overflow probability per service class, based on ideas from large deviations and optimal control. We exploit these performance analysis results by devising a call admission control algorithm which can provide per class QoS guarantees. We compare the proposed approach to alternative worst-case and effective bandwidth-based schemes and argue that it leads to increased efficiency. Finally, we discuss extensions to the network case in order to provide end-to-end QoS guarantees.     

Resilient overlay network for real-time interactive multimedia sessions in corporate networks

Real-time interactive multimedia communications are becoming increasingly useful for education, business, e-commerce and e-government, providing an enriched user experience in teleconferencing, e-meetings, distance training and product demonstrations. Large corporations are usually located at several sites, so real-time multipoint sessions within corporations are especially difficult. IP multicast is available or feasible within each site of an organization. Thus, corporate networks can be considered as various multicast-capable networks interconnected through a wide area network without multicast connectivity. This paper proposes a resilient self-managed overlay network to support real-time multipoint interactive sessions within corporate networks. The proposed overlay takes advantage of the configuration of corporate networks to self-organize and provide an efficient media delivery service, making use of multicast communications wherever available. Various self-healing techniques are implemented allowing for the continuity of ongoing sessions in spite of network disruptions and entity failures. Extensive simulations and tests have been carried out to assess the performance and resilience of the overlay facing several types of disruptions.     

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.     

Adlet: an active document abstraction for multimedia informationfusion

A new approach is described for the fusion of multimedia information based on the concept of active documents advertising on the Internet, whereby the metadata of a document travels in the network to seek out documents of interest to the parent document and, at the same time, advertises its parent document to other interested documents. This abstraction of metadata is called an adlet, which is the core of our approach. Two important features make this approach applicable to multimedia information fusion, information retrieval, data mining, geographic information systems, and medical information systems: 1) any document, including a Web page, database record, video file, audio file, image and even paper documents, can be enhanced by an adlet and become an active document; and 2) any node in a nonactive network can be enhanced by adlet-savvy software and the adlet-enhanced node can coexist with other nonenhanced nodes. An experimental prototype provides a testbed for feasibility studies in a hybrid active network     

A two-hop clustered image transmission scheme for maximizing network lifetime in wireless multimedia sensor networks

In traditional wireless sensor networks, normal sensor nodes which measure scalar physical phenomena like temperature, pressure and humidity usually compress the data before sending them out to minimize the communication energy consumption. However, this strategy may not be suitable for image transmission in wireless multimedia sensor networks. In the traditional clustering structure, when the camera-equipped node or the cluster head compresses the images, an energy hole will appear. This is a key factor that affects the lifetime of the network. To avoid the energy hole problem, a two-hop clustered image transmission scheme is proposed in this paper. In the proposed scheme, many redirectors are used to compress and forward the images for the purpose of reducing energy consumption of the camera-equipped node and the cluster head. With adaptive adjustment of the transmission radius in the camera cluster and tasks allocation based on the residual energy of the normal sensor nodes by the camera-equipped node, the energy consumption of the nodes in the network is balanced. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme can prolong the network lifetime dramatically in the case of the sensor nodes deployed densely.     

A multimedia service composition scheme for ubiquitous networks

It is a challenging task to develop a high quality and secure multimedia service for mobile terminals used in the ubiquitous computing environment. One of the issues is the resource limitation of mobile terminals. In this paper, we presented a multimedia service composition scheme for sharing computer and communication resources by using plural terminals to compensate for this resource limitation. The proposed scheme is based on user authentication, service access control, and the multi-agent-based adaptive Quality-of-Service (QoS) control framework that we developed. We also proposed a novel access mode control based on the trustworthiness of users and extension of the multi-agent-based adaptive QoS control framework to plural users. Focusing on the home network as a typical ubiquitous network, we implemented a prototype testbed system and showed experimental results for the multimedia service composition.     

A formalized delegation model for multimedia social networks

In response to the issues of second-hand sharing and repeat delegation of the digital content in existing multimedia social networks, this paper proposed a novel formalized delegation model for multimedia social network. In accordance with this model, delegators can independently lay down delegation policies. Further, related delegation constraints and strategies were identified to solve delegation conflicts. When a conflict arises among several delegations, strategies could be used to solve the conflict. This delegation model can control the authorities and are delegated consistently until the authorization expires or is revoked. And also, the paper presented essential security policies that lead to revoking different authorities. A use case of real multimedia social network further verified the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed model.     

适于多种通信设备的多媒体通信终端软件

针对应急通信系统的需求,本文介绍了一种适用于多种通信设备的多媒体通信终端的软件实现方法。软件采用了面向对象的设计方法,根据通信设备和各种业务的特点,合理的界定了通信模块和各种业务模块之间的职能。在对通信模块接口进行合理抽象的基础上,软件实现了适用于以太网、网络电台和短波电台的通信模块。在通过不同的下层通信设备进行通信时,终端软件只需要选择不同的通信模块就能实现包括语音、视频、短信息、静态图像、电子白板和文件传输在内的多媒体通信。     

适于多种通信设备的多媒体通信终端软件

针对应急通信系统的需求,本文介绍了一种适用于多种通信设备的多媒体通信终端的软件实现方法.软件采用了面向对象的设计方法,根据通信设备和各种业务的特点,合理的界定了通信模块和各种业务模块之间的职能.在对通信模块接口进行合理抽象的基础上,软件实现了适用于以太网、网络电台和短波电台的通信模块.在通过不同的下层通信设备进行通信时,终端软件只需要选择不同的通信模块就能实现包括语音、视频、短信息、静态图像、电子白板和文件传输在内的多媒体通信.     

A scalable multimedia QoS architecture for ad hoc networks

Communication demands have grown from separate data and voice to integrated multimedia, paving the way to converging fixed, mobile and IP networks. Supporting Multimedia is a challenging task for wireless ad hoc network designers. Multimedia forms high data rate traffic with stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Wireless ad hoc networks are characterized by frequent topology changes, unreliable wireless channel, network congestion and resource contention. Providing scalable QoS is the most important challenge for multimedia delivery over ad hoc networks. We introduce here a provisioning and routing architecture for ad hoc networks which scales well while provisioning QoS. The proposed architecture is analysed using a mix of HTTP, voice and video streaming applications over 54 Mbps 802.11 g-based ad hoc networks. The architecture is simulated and compared to well-known routing protocols using the OPNET Modeller. The results show that our architecture scales well with increase in the network size, and outperforms well-known routing protocols.