AMUSE: advanced broadband services trials for residential users

The AMUSE project in the framework of the ACTS program sponsored by the European Union, has answered various questions related to the implementation and provisioning of new multimedia services. The means to pursue such objectives has been the setup and operation of small-scale trials in various European countries, involving real residential users. The article first presents the project as a whole. Then the focus is moved to evaluation of the different technologies experimented with in the field. AMUSE services have been supplied in the context of trial islands characterized by different access network typologies. Validation of the different access technologies and results coming from their installation, integration, and operation have represented a major objective of the project. Although it is very difficult to highlight particular outcomes from the technical experiments, with so many technologies put in place, some general indications emerging from the deployment of some of these technologies are supplied. Emphasis is then put on the facts and findings resulting from the activities performed in the Italian trial island, where interactive services, including fast Internet access from PCs or STBs, Internet TV style, and switched video broadcasting services have been offered. The article concludes with a summary of the major lessons learned from the trials and the identification of a number of key factors of success for interactive multimedia     

INSIGNIA: a pan European trial for the intelligent broadbandnetwork architecture

This article summarizes the work carried out within the ACTS project INSIGNIA, which is targeted at the provision of interactive multimedia services through IN and B-ISDN integration. The basic concepts regarding the integrated approach are discussed with emphasis on the functional architecture. This discussion is followed by a presentation of IN multimedia services which were created based on these principles. An overview of the real-life trials which were conducted on a pan-European basis in order to evaluate the INSIGNIA services is also given. The results of this evaluation are examined from a variety of viewpoints, including functional architecture, user and network equipment, service logic programs and applications, as well as user acceptance and network performance     

GMN: a broadband multimedia communications service concept andfield trials

The Global Megamedia Network is a network service concept developed by NTT to be the key component in its information-sharing business strategy. The concept gives the architecture for providing full-fledged multimedia services during the next decade. It will be used to construct a high-throughput secure networking environment in which advanced multimedia services will be provided to customers in an easy and comfortable to use manner at an affordable cost. The GMN concept proposes the deployment of flexible and high-quality service provision platforms that enable high-performance networking (real-time transfer of megabytes of information), provide high functionality to make multimedia communications easy and comfortable, and provide services at about the same cost as existing telephony. This article first analyzes the market trends and customer needs we are facing in Japan. Then the GMN services concept and the network architecture for deploying services are explained. GMN-CL technologies are explained as the first step in developing full-fledged GMN services. Finally, NTT R&D's testbed network, called GEMnet, is described and the results of field trials are presented     

On the fast BSS transition algorithms in the IEEE 802.11r local area wireless networks

Handover performance is critical to support multimedia services that are becoming increasingly available over the wireless devices. The high transition delay can be unaccepted for such services or can be a source of disruption on the session. On the other side, IEEE 802.11 standard is being extended with new functionalities. Security and QoS features, included in recent IEEE 802.11-2007 standard, add management frames that are exchanged during the transition process. In consequence the handover delay is increased. IEEE 802.11r-2008 amendment introduces Fast BSS Transition (FT) that simplifies the handover process. The authors propose the new handover algorithms based on FT protocol and compare them with existing solution. Additionally, simulation experiments are conducted to answer the question if multimedia services can be properly supported in IEEE 802.11r networks. The authors prove that handover delay can be reduced to 13 ms in the average case.     

Digital Gateways for Multimedia Home Networks

Residential networks are expected to open a huge market and introduce a bright, new era in telecommunications, by exponentially increasing the network usage, via broadband, added value services. Despite the business risks, investments made by the telecommunication industries clearly express the belief that the home networking market is about to take off. In this paper, a home network architecture for the provision of interactive multimedia services is considered and various access and indoor networking alternatives are presented. Then the focus is put on the Residential Gateway (RG), as a single point of networks convergence. Based on prototypes development, laboratory experiments and field trials throughout Europe and USA, a modular and a compact RG hardware architecture are described and compared, while the software architecture to support the RG functionality is described and the main building blocks are analyzed. Finally, a Web browser-based network management and control application that provides a visual metaphor of the RG is presented. This revised version was published online in September 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

江苏省前期ISDN试验及应用思考

充分利用现有电话网和积极发展在电话网上的数据传输业务，具有十分重要的现实意义。江苏省先后在省内十个城市中进行了前期ＩＳＤＮ试验，利用２Ｂ＋３设备进行数据通信，既满足了用户对数据通信的需求，对于提高企业的竞争力也具深远影响。本文作者介绍了江苏省前期ＩＳＤＮ实验的具体设备，技术及其应用情况，并对今后的工作提出了积极建议。     

Simultaneous handover scheme for IEEE 802.11 WLANs with IEEE 802.21 triggers

Handover performance in wireless networks is important, especially nowadays, when multimedia services are becoming increasingly available over the wireless devices. However, users expect uncompromised mobility when using the service. Thus, the support of multimedia services is not possible if handover is inefficient. At the same time it is clear that a strict separation between IP Layer and the Link Layer results in built-in sources of delay. The paper discusses the IEEE 802.11 and Mobile IPv4 handover performance in practical scenarios. We introduce a new simultaneous handover scheme with IEEE 802.21 triggers. In order to verify the handover performance, simulation experiments have been conducted, whose results are also presented and discussed.     

The feature interaction problem in networked multimedia services — present and future

Feature interaction problems have been a serious issue among intelligent network services for a number of years, but, until now, the issue has not been investigated for existing and emerging networked multimedia services. This paper describes the final results of the feature interactions in a multimedia systems project which determined the level of threat that the problem posed to the networked multimedia domain. After considering the causes of the problem, some existing multimedia services are described and illustrative multimedia feature interaction scenarios provided. Issues with future networks are outlined and the paper concludes by outlining some possible approaches for handling the problem in the future.     

Requirements for an IMS-based Quadruple Play Service Architecture

Quadruple play can be understood as the provisioning of high-speed voice, video (live broadcast or on demand services, such as video on demand), and data services over broadband connections with mobility support. Currently, there are several trials of the IP multimedia subsystem deployed worldwide that promise to provide telecommunication and advanced multimedia services. This article focuses mainly on the basic requirements of a cooperative service delivery platform for provisioning quadruple play services. As a result of this research, an IMS-based cooperative service delivery platform is presented. This supports various access technologies to acquire the streaming services. To validate our quadruple play architecture, we implemented a prototype based on DVB-H and UMTS as the access technologies. This prototype is part of the ongoing development of the proposed architecture     

Interactive multimedia services to residential users

Despite the business risks involved in the introduction of digital video and interactive television, vigorous investments made by the telecommunication industries and content owners clearly demonstrate the belief that such services are going to happen. In this paper, a complete scenario for the provision of interactive multimedia services from the residential user's point of view is considered, focusing on software components. Initially, a reference architecture configuration, based on the DAVIC paradigm, suitable for the provision of residential interactive broadband services is presented. In addition to hardware capabilities, the system will be considered successful only if it is easy to learn, worth the time and cost-effective. Consequently, a set of possible service requirements is introduced and a development process for distributed interactive multimedia applications is proposed. Finally, based on experience gained from the implementation of applications in different residential trials throughout Europe, guidelines and methodologies for user interface design are illustrated     

Considering User Behavior and Multiple QoS Supports in Multimedia Streaming Caching

With the prevalence of video-on-demand (VOD) services as well as the diffusion of various multimedia devices, caching in a multimedia streaming server is becoming increasingly important. However, due to some peculiar characteristics of multimedia objects and user activities in streaming services, design of an efficient caching system becomes a more challenging problem compared to the traditional caching systems. This paper discusses some important issues that are of interest in the domain of multimedia streaming caching and presents a new cache management scheme for multimedia streaming servers. Our new scheme considers different streaming rates of multimedia objects as well as the inter-arrival time between two consecutive requests on an identical object. It also considers user activities in requesting and playing multimedia contents. Trace-driven simulations with real world VOD traces show that the proposed scheme improves the performance of multimedia streaming systems significantly.     

Mobile Multimedia Services

Mobile multimedia has been a goal for technologists and the mobile industry alike for some time, but now many components are coming together to make mobile multimedia a reality — mobile data networks, devices with colour screens, multimedia content, etc. This paper reviews the vision for mobile multimedia and describes a roadmap for its deployment, beginning in the here and now with SMS-based services and culminating in 3G services complemented by wireless LAN hot-spots. Since mobile technology alone cannot realise mobile multimedia, later sections of this paper also consider the importance of appropriate business models, value chains and billing. Some challenges to mobile multimedia are also discussed and some potential solutions and developments that may help to overcome them. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Personal multimedia services over a common home and access networking environment

This article presents a new end-to-end architecture model that will enable the deployment of a plethora of different multimedia services from diverse suppliers competitively coexisting over a common access and home networking environment. The model is focused on personal multimedia communication services and terminals. The proposed model is a segmentation of the end-to-end multimedia chain into several business segments. The interfaces among segments and functional entities inside each segment are identified and defined in the work. In order to study the impact level of the results achieved, a comparison with the approximation to NGN provided by current standardization bodies in the field (3GPP and TISPAN) is also included in the article. This comparison highlights the advantages of using this model as a solution to offer PMC services.     

Design of spread spectrum multicode CDMA transport architecture formultimedia services

We investigate a new application of the well-known spread spectrum code division multiple access (SS-CDMA) techniques to multimedia services related to the development of the next-generation wireless mobile networks interconnecting with a wireline ATM-based broadband network. Such services allow users to share novel multimedia applications without any geographical restrictions. However, since the mobile radio channel has a fixed limited bandwidth, the traditional SS-CDMA system may not be sufficient to accommodate the variable bit rate (VBR) multimedia services requested by multiple mobile users simultaneously. Moreover, the traffic load at the base station can change dynamically due to the time-varying throughput requirement of these requested multimedia services. To tackle this difficulty, a multicode CDMA (MC-CDMA) technique is proposed to provide multirate multimedia services by varying the number of spreading codes assigned to each user in order to meet its throughput requirement. In MC-CDMA, a spreading code can be used to transmit information at a basic bit rate. Users (video or data) who need higher transmission rates can use multiple codes in parallel. Meanwhile, the maximum available number of codes in the MC-CDMA system is still limited. Hence, a cost-effective dynamic code allocation scheme has then been proposed to dynamically assign an appropriate number of codes to each user for achieving the maximum resource utilization for multiuser multimedia services via the mobile radio channel. Finally, a number of real multimedia titles generated from the well-known MacroMind Director are conducted to evaluate performance     

Project EXODUS: Experimental mobile multimedia deployment in ATM networks

This paper reports on European Commission sponsored research within the EXODUS project. The project carries out research in the context of the evolution towards UMTS and performs personal and terminal multimedia mobility experiments using fixed and wide-band radio access in an international ATM network. After introducing the EXODUS platform and services, the paper presents an IN-based functional model which is suitable for support of mobile multimedia services in ATM networks. Interworking and mobility management issues are discussed, and information flows for call handling are presented. The paper includes a presentation of the mobility management and enhanced INAP protocols which have been developed by the EXODUS project. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

基于QoS套接字的多媒体业务QoS保障的研究

列举了基于QoS套接字的两种多媒体业务，其中一种基于UDP协议，另一种基于TCP协议。实验结果表明，增加了QoS套接字后，两种多媒体业务的性能都得到了较大的改善，但是由于TCP和UDP本身特性的不同，两种多媒体业务性能改善的程度有所不同。最后对试验结果进行了讨论并得出了一些有意义的结论。     

3G移动数据多媒体业务发展浅析

3G业务的发展方向是提供数据多媒体业务，数据业务是3G未来的关键业务。移动多媒体业务的成功必须具备客户体验、电信运营和技术支撑三项基本的商业原则。目前全球发展3G数据业务存在着服务质量差、费用高的问题，需要建立新的商业模式，推出一些重点业务。     

Call admission control for mobile multimedia communications withtraffic asymmetry between uplink and downlink

The call admission control (CAC) for mobile communications is one of the most important engineering issues since it belongs to the category of resource management and the radio spectrum is a very scarce resource. In future mobile cellular systems, the CAC scheme should be efficient for multimedia services as well as for voice services. This paper proposes an advanced CAC scheme for mobile multimedia communications. A characteristic of the proposed scheme is that it takes account of the traffic (load) asymmetry between uplink and downlink in mobile multimedia environments, we evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme using Markov analysis. The performance measures on which we focus are the utilization of resources and the blocking probabilities of handoff calls and new calls. We present some numerical examples with practically meaningful parameter values. As a result, we show that the proposed CAC scheme can be a good choice for mobile multimedia systems such as the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 systems     

3G计费系统的探索:时不我待

3G时代是移动多媒体时代，但是移动多媒体时代并不会等着3G的来临才出现，全球的移动运营商已在2.5G网络上提供移动内容服务并在应对由内容计费带来的新挑战。明确了由于移动内容服务在移动网络中的发展给计费模式带来的挑战，并讨论了计费模式在过渡期的发展，其中还介绍了一些欧洲运营商的经验：它们正面临的问题以及采取的应对方法。     

电信网络与IP网络融合的现状与观察

介绍了电信网络和ＩＰ网络融合的现状。一方面大力加强信息基础设施建设,营造高速宽带化网络环境,探索网络技术、网络业务的全员融合;另一方面在现有网络资源的基础上开发新业务,应用平稳过渡的渐进演变策略,逐步提供宽带多媒体通信业务。