Operating and powering optical fiber network

Fiber-in-the-loop (FITL) systems enable the distribution transport of existing telecommunications services and future broadband services over fiber optic media. An FITL system comprises a host digital terminal (HDT) connected to some number of optical network units (ONUs) via a fiber optic passive distribution network (PDN). Each ONU provides metallic service interfaces via short drops consisting of metallic wire pairs or coaxial cable. FITL systems that carry plain old telephony services (POTS) are referred to as “POTS FITL” systems. FITL systems that deliver VDT services or combined VDT and telephony services are referred to as “VDT FITL” systems. There are a number of architectural alternatives for VDT FITL, including configurations involving the use of parallel technologies for transporting video signals in the distribution. The authors discuss network operations and powering in particular     

Digital audio coding for visual communications

Current and future visual communications for applications such as broadcasting videotelephony, video- and audiographic-conferencing, and interactive multimedia services assume a substantial audio component. Even text, graphics, fax, still images, email documents, etc. will gain from voice annotation and audio clips. A wide range of speech, wideband speech, and wideband audio coders is available for such applications. In the context of audiovisual communications, the quality of telephone-bandwidth speech is acceptable for some videotelephony and videoconferencing services. Higher bandwidths (wideband speech) may be necessary to improve the intelligibility and naturalness of speech. High quality audio coding including multichannel audio will be necessary in advanced digital TV and multimedia services. This paper explains basic approaches to speech, wideband speech, and audio bit rate compressions in audiovisual communications. These signal classes differ in bandwidth, dynamic range, and in listener expectation of offered quality. It will become obvious that the use of our knowledge of auditory perception helps minimizing perception of coding artifacts and leads to efficient low bit rate coding algorithms which can achieve substantially more compression than was thought possible only a few years ago. The paper concentrates on worldwide source coding standards beneficial for consumers, service providers, and manufacturers     

A multimedia front-end for an expert network management system

A multimedia natural-language interface for an expert network-management system is described. The different media discussed are speech, text, and graphics. An object-oriented, multimedia interaction language called Milan is used to describe the multimedia information. Application of the multimedia interface to a digital data services (DDS) network is illustrated. It is believed that such multimedia front ends will play a major role in the design of intelligent human-machine interfaces     

IMS网络中多业务场景下网络容量测算方法探讨

【摘 要】： IMS是一种接入无关的提供语音、视频、图片、文本等多种媒体组合业务并实现统一控制的控制网。其接入无关性,使得IMS成为固定和移动网络融合演进的基础。由于IMS终端类型以及业务种类的多样性,在进行IMS用户预测和网络规划时较为复杂。而目前对于多业务场景下IMS网络容量测算缺乏统一的方法,给网络规划工作带来一定困扰。本文将结合IMS网络对于用户和码号的定义,不同种类业务间相互关系和面向的用户群等信息进行分析和梳理,提供在多业务场景下的IMS核心网网络容量测算方法建议。     

Interactive multimedia satellite access communications

Recent advances in satellite technology are making possible the development of broadband satellite access (BSA) systems for two-way access to multimedia Internet services. This article provides an overview of BSA systems with an emphasis on resource management and interworking techniques to support IP-based multimedia services. The article draws on collaborative research performed over the past few years as part of the Broadband Satellite Communications Major Project of the Canadian Institute of Telecommunications Research. Some key innovations are described: combined free/demand assigned multiple access (CFDAMA) for dynamic satellite bandwidth allocation; an architecture for DiffServ provisioning over BSA systems; and a dynamic TCP Vegas protocol as a proxy service for split-TCP connections over BSA systems.     

Access network architectural issues for future telecommunicationnetworks

This article discusses the evolution of access networks to support future multimedia services, with emphasis on the role of Working Party 3 of ITU-T Study Group 13. An overview of the access network is given, and the interfaces between the access network and other portions of the telecommunications network such as the user-network interface (UNI), service node interface (SNI), and telecommunication management (Q3) interface are described. The major functions of the access network are summarized, and various examples of multimedia access architectures are discussed. Fundamental principles for the broadband service node interface (VB5) standard are reviewed     

Application-Level QoS Negotiation and Signaling for Advanced Multimedia Services in the IMS

The IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) has been recognized as a reference next-generation network architecture for offering multimedia services over an Internet Protocol (IP)-based infrastructure. One of the key benefits of the IMS is efficient and flexible introduction of new services and access to third-party application providers, thanks to standard interfaces and standardized service capabilities. To support novel media-rich applications across a wide range of user devices and access networks, IMS must support negotiable quality of service (QoS) for IP multimedia sessions. In this article, we describe the application-level QoS signaling as specified by the 3GPP and propose some enhancements based on advanced QoS parameter matching and optimization functionality to be included along the signaling path. We outline various signaling flow scenarios and discuss them in the context of a case study involving an IMS-supported 3D virtual environment, featuring a treasure-hunt-like game.     

Content and Service Protection for the Ubiquitous TV Based on Network Convergence

Today, the ubiquitous multimedia services are becoming more and more popular. However, the secure solutions that confirm the content and service security in these services are still open issues because of various network convergences and device interconnections. This paper investigates an ubiquitous multimedia service architecture and proposes a secure solution for it. In this service architecture, the multimedia content is encoded with scalable video coding and broadcasted via digital video broadcasting for handheld terminals (DVB-H) to mobile terminals, the access right is transmitted by global system for mobile (GSM/GPRS) channel, and the media content and access right can also be transferred from mobile terminals to home TV through WiFi based Wireless Local Area Network. The proposed secure solution supports three kinds of business models by using various content encryption modes and secure transmission protocols. The solution’s security is evaluated and discussed. Since few work has been done to solve this problem, the work proposed in this paper is expected to attract more researchers. Additionally, the solution is also potential for other ubiquitous services.     

Speech and language processing for next-millennium communicationsservices

In the future, the world of telecommunications will be vastly different than it is today. The driving force will be the seamless integration of real time communications (e.g. voice, video, music, etc.) and data into a single network, with ubiquitous access to that network anywhere, anytime, and by a wide range of devices. The only currently available ubiquitous access device to the network is the telephone, and the only ubiquitous user access technology mode is spoken voice commands and natural language dialogues with machines. In the future, new access devices and modes will augment speech in this role, but are unlikely to supplant the telephone and access by speech anytime soon. Speech technologies have progressed to the point where they are now viable for a broad range of communications services, including: compression of speech for use over wired and wireless networks; speech synthesis, recognition, and understanding for dialogue access to information, people, and messaging; and speaker verification for secure access to information and services. The paper provides brief overviews of these technologies, discusses some of the unique properties of wireless, plain old telephone service, and Internet protocol networks that make voice communication and control problematic, and describes the types of voice services available in the past and today, and those that we foresee becoming available over the next several years     

多媒体彩铃业务在TD-SCDMA网中的应用

3G多媒体彩铃业务作为2G话音彩铃业务的扩展和增强,属于3G特色业务之一。本文首先介绍了多媒体彩铃平台的业务功能,然后详细描述了平台建设方案,包括系统架构、接口、路由机制、计费机制,以及业务实现技术方案分析,最后对多媒体彩铃业务的未来发展方向进行了展望总结。     

iMobile EE – An Enterprise Mobile Service Platform

iMobile is an enterprise mobile service platform that allows resource-limited mobile devices to communicate with each other and to securely access corporate contents and services. The original iMobile architecture consists of devlets that provide protocol interfaces to different mobile devices and infolets that access and transcode information based on device profiles. iMobile Enterprise Edition (iMobile EE) is a redesign of the original iMobile architecture to address the security, scalability, and availability requirements of a large enterprise such as AT&T. iMobile EE incorporates gateways that interact with corporate authentication services, replicated iMobile servers with backend connections to corporate services, a reliable message queue that connects iMobile gateways and servers, and a comprehensive service profile database that governs operations of the mobile service platform. The iMobile EE architecture was also extended to provide personalized multimedia services, allowing mobile users to remotely control, record, and request video contents. iMobile EE aims to provide a scalable, secure, and modular software platform that makes enterprise services easily accessible to a growing list of mobile devices roaming among various wireless networks.     

A survey of quality of service in IEEE 802.11 networks

Developed as a simple and cost-effective wireless technology for best effort services, IEEE 802.11 has gained popularity at an unprecedented rate. However, due to the lack of built-in quality of service support, IEEE 802.11 experiences serious challenges in meeting the demands of multimedia services and applications. This article surveys 802.11 QoS schemes, including service differentiation in the MAC layer, admission control and bandwidth reservation in MAC and higher layers, and link adaptation in the physical layer, designed to meet these challenges by providing the necessary enhancements for the required QoS. Furthermore, the article addresses issues that arise when end-to-end QoS has to be guaranteed in today's pervasive heterogeneous wired-cum-wireless networks. Among these challenges, protocol interoperability, multihop scheduling, full mobility support, and seamless vertical handoff among multiple mobile/wireless interfaces are specifically addressed.     

Automatic Multi-Interface Management Through Profile Handling

In the recent years, wireless communication systems have received increased interest in commercial applications. Different kind of wireless public access have become increasingly available in various areas like airports, stations and shopping centers as well as at office or at home. Mobile terminals, such as phones or laptops, are often equipped with several network interfaces and may use simultaneously several access networks. For instance it is nowadays common to have UMTS, WiFi, BlueTooth, and even WiMAX interfaces on a single mobile device. Each of them can be attached to different Internet providers offering seamless connectivity, high-speed multimedia services with different billing models and security levels. In this paper, we focus on an advanced middleware that allows, through a comprehensive profile management, the support of automatic interface configuration and per-flow interface selection.The system takes into account preferences given by the terminals owner, the users and the applications. This middleware makes the terminal to be always “best” connected and provides service continuity in case of vertical handover. As illustration, we show how the proposed middleware allows cost-effective management of a fleet of terminals.     

The holy grail of content-based media analysis

Tools and systems for content-based access to multimedia and-image., video, audio, graphics, text, and any number of combinations-has increased in the last decade. We've seen a common theme of developing automatic analysis techniques for deriving metadata (data describing information in the content at both syntactic and semantic levels). Such metadata facilitates developing innovative tools and systems for multimedia information retrieval, summarization, delivery, and manipulation. Many interesting demonstrations of potential applications and services have emerged-finding images visually similar to a chosen picture (or sketch); summarizing videos with thumbnails of keyframes; finding video clips of a specific event, story, or person; and producing a two-minute skim of an hour-long program. In order to evaluate content-based research methodologies, the article considers intended users and whether alternative solutions exist and areas of research     

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     

Resource management and quality of service in third generationwireless networks

The third generation networks and services present opportunities to offer multimedia applications and services that meet end-to-end quality of service requirements. The key parts of the standards are already in place, and limited 3G services have already been turned on. While the evolution to 3G occurs, many operators will implement 2.5G interim solutions for a good period of time. We discuss the various evolution scenarios from the present 2G networks to 3G networks. Then we present the UMTS QoS architecture and its requirements, followed by a discussion on QoS in 3G air interfaces, radio access network, and core network     

A portable multimedia terminal

A personal communications system (PCS) that centers on integration of services to provide access to data and communications using a specialized, wireless multimedia terminal is described. The possible applications and support systems for such a terminal are outlined. Several of the major design issues behind portable multimedia terminals, including spectrally efficient picocellular networking, low-power digital design, video data compression, and integrated wireless RF transceivers, are discussed. It is argued that optimizing performance in each of these areas is crucial in meeting the performance requirements of the overall system and providing a small, lightweight terminal for personal communications     

Wireless ATM networks: technology status and future directions

The concept of “wireless ATM” (WATM), first proposed in 1992, is now being actively considered as a potential framework for new-generation wireless communication networks capable of supporting integrated, quality-of service (QoS) based multimedia services. In this review paper, we outline the technological rationale for wireless ATM, present a system-level architecture, and discuss key design issues for both mobile ATM switching infrastructure and radio access subsystems. The WATM radio access layer issues covered in this paper include: spectrum allocation; spectrum etiquette; modem technology; and medium access/data link control (MAC/DLC) protocols. Mobile ATM aspects such as ATM signaling extensions for handoff control, location management, and mobile QoS control are discussed. A summary of current wireless/mobile ATM technology development and standardization status is given, including an outline of our WATMnet prototype. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions for wireless ATM technology such as Internet protocol (IP) integration and mobile multimedia terminals/applications