Multimedia Content Delivery Research Articles

Optimized congestion aware and rate-adaptive multimedia communication for application in fragile environment during disaster management and recovery

Delivery of multimedia content over network has always been given vital importance since its inception. Different models for content delivery have been proposed with respect to multiple factors like bandwidth, quality of content, importance, and delivery method, etc. In this paper, we propose a Hyper Text Transfer Protocol-based rate adaptive transcoding and streaming technique that maintains its multimedia streaming quality, especially when network grows congested and fragile during Disaster Management and Recovery operations. The proposed solution provides users high-quality audio and video contents even when network resources are limited and fragile. We developed a real-time test bed that can deliver high-quality streaming videos by transcoding the original video in real time to a scalable codec, which allows streaming adaptation according to network dynamics. We also performed validation tests to ensure multimedia delivery in cloud computing, functionality on our hosted website for live communication between transmitter and receiver. From our experiments, we observed that the rate adaptive transcoding and streaming can efficiently deliver information services such as live multimedia in emergency and disasters under very low bandwidth environments.

A Crossbreed approach to Enhanced Security of Multimedia Data using SKIP JACK and Elgamal Algorithm

Due to the new development in computer networking expertise, delivery of the digital multimedia content through the internet is huge. However, the increase number of the digital credentials, all inclusive availability, and the multimedia dispensation tools of Internet entrance has created a very easy medium for exclusive rights trickery and out of manage distribution of multimedia contented. A most important constraint now is to protect the thinker property of multimedia content in multimedia organization. So, in this document multimedia protection will be providing using SKIP JACK and Elgamal algorithm. The full implementation is done in .NET structure.

Energy efficient mobile video streaming using mobility

Undeniably the support of data services over the wireless Internet is becoming increasingly challenging with the plethora of different characteristic requirements of each service type. Evidently, about half of the data traffic shifted across the Internet to date consists of multimedia content such as video clips or music files that necessitate stringent real-time constraints in playback and for which increasing volumes of data should be shifted with the introduction of higher quality content. This work recasts the problem of multimedia content delivery in the mobile Internet. We propose an optimization framework with the major tenet being that real-time playback constraints can be satisfied while at the same time enabling controlled delay tolerance in packet transmission by capitalizing on pre-fetching and data buffering. More specifically two strategies are proposed amenable for real time implementation that utilize the inherent delay tolerance of popular applications based on different flavors of HTTP streaming. The proposed mechanisms have the potential of achieving many-fold energy efficiency gains at no cost on the perceived user experience.

Real-time personalized content catering via viewer sentiment feedback: a QoE perspective

Multimedia content service and delivery have long been plagued by the difficulty in obtaining feedback on users’ true quality of experience. Existing estimation methods do not adequately cover all relevant factors, whereas questionnaires are costly, time-consuming, and impossible to scale. In this work, we present a framework for estimating a viewer’s reactions toward on-screen content in real time by capturing and analyzing his/her facial video, thus allowing up-to-date learning of the viewer’s preferences to occur, enabling the content provider to serve the most desirable and relevant contents and advertisements. Experiments have shown that the proposed sentiment analysis method can predict the viewer’s preferences with good accuracy.

Energy-efficient device-differentiated cooperative adaptive multimedia delivery solution in wireless networks

There is very much interest in balancing remote delivered multimedia quality and energy consumption in a heterogeneous wireless network environment. This paper proposes a solution for Energy-efficient Device-differentiated Cooperative Adaptive Multimedia Delivery over wireless networks (EDCAM), a hybrid innovative approach which combines multimedia quality adaptation and content sharing mechanisms to save energy at client devices according to their different characteristics. EDCAM relies on an automatic application-aware device profiling, which is proposed to assess individual device energy constraints. These constraints along with QoS delivery scores are used as metrics for the multimedia delivery quality adaptation. Devices make use of content sharing partners with which retrieve the content cooperatively, reducing the usage of high energy consuming networks and therefore increase the delivery energy efficiency.Simulation tests in a WiFi and LTE-based heterogeneous wireless network environment with increasing number of video flows and users show how the proposed EDCAM solution results in significant improvements of up to 40% in terms of energy efficiency in comparison with three other state-of-the-art solutions, while maintaining the performance of multimedia content delivery and estimated user perceived quality at the highest levels.

A Survey on Rate Adaptation Algorithms for Effective Resource Utilization in LTE Advanced

LTE Advanced has brought revolution in the field of wireless communication technology by providing high data rates of up to 1Gbps. There is a need of increased data rates these days that may support the delivery of richer mobile multimedia contents to the end users. Rate adaptation is one of the key enabling technology in the success of LTE Advanced that has cited attraction of academia and research communities in recent years. Rate adaptation is the determination of the optimal data transmission rate most suitable for current prevailing wireless channel conditions. To maximize the performance of wireless devices, it is important to select the best appropriate rate hence rate adaptation algorithms (RAA’s) are required. This work includes a comprehensive survey on various types of RAA’s in LTE-A for effective resource utilization. Depending on the channel conditions various performance parameters such as throughput, power consumption and latency have been studied. It has been observed from the literature survey that many proposals have been published on LTE-A. Sill there is a need of research to be carried in LTE-A as this technology is not fully matured so open issues and future scope are also raised in this work.

Delay and link utilization aware routing protocol for wireless multimedia sensor networks

Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) consist of networks of interconnected devices involved in retrieving multimedia content, such as, video, audio, acoustic, and scalar data, from the environment. The goal of these networks is optimized delivery of multimedia content based on quality of service (QoS) parameters, such as delay, jitter and distortion. In multimedia communications each packet has strict playout deadlines, thus late arriving packets and lost packets are treated equally. It is a challenging task to guarantee soft delay deadlines along with energy minimization, in resource constrained, high data rate WMSNs. Conventional layered approach does not provide optimal solution for guaranteeing soft delay deadlines due to the large amount of overhead involved at each layer. Cross layer approach is fast gaining popularity, due to its ability to exploit the interdependence between different layers, to guarantee QoS constraints like latency, distortion, reliability, throughput and error rate. The paper presents a channel utilization and delay aware routing (CUDAR) protocol for WMSNs. This protocol is based on a cross-layer approach, which provides soft end-to-end delay guarantees along with efficient utilization of resources. Extensive simulation analysis of CUDAR shows that it provides better delay guarantees than existing protocols and consequently reduces jitter and distortion in WMSN communication.

Scalable Video Multicasting: A Stochastic Game Approach With Optimal Pricing

Heterogeneous multimedia content delivery over wireless networks is an important yet challenging issue. One of the challenges is maintaining the quality of service due to scarce resources in wireless communications and heavy loadings from heterogeneous demands. A promising solution is combining multicasting and scalable video coding (SVC) techniques via cross-layer design, which has been shown to effectively enhance the quality of multimedia content delivery service in the literature. Nevertheless, most existing works on SVC multicasting system focus on the static scenarios, where a snapshot of user demands is given and remains the same. In addition, the economic value of the SVC multicasting system, which is an important issue from the service provider's perspective, has seldom been explored. In this paper, we study a subscription-based SVC multicasting system with stochastic user arrival and heterogeneous user preferences. A stochastic framework based on the multidimensional Markov decision process (M-MDP) is proposed to study the negative network externality existing in the proposed system and theoretically evaluate the corresponding system efficiency. A game-theoretic analysis is conducted to understand the rational demands from heterogeneous users under different subscription pricing schemes. By transforming the original dynamic and complex M-MDP revenue optimization problem into a traditional average-reward MDP problem, we show that the optimal pricing strategy that maximizes the expected revenue of the service provider can be derived efficiently. Moreover, the overall user's valuation on the system, e.g., social welfare, is maximized under such an optimal pricing strategy. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed solutions is evaluated through simulations.

A dynamic MBS zone framework for cost-effective inter-MBS zone handover in WiMAX networks

To synchronize multicast broadcast service (MBS) zone data transmissions, the WiMAX standard defines a coordination mechanism to coordinate data transmissions over the WiMAX network; however, the packet loss recovery procedures, which are parts of the coordination mechanism, enlarge packet transmission latency and packet buffer pool requirement. Therefore, we propose an in-frame control (IFC) scheme to decrease packet error rate and packet retransmission count, so as to reduce the packet transmission latency and packet buffer pool requirement. To support level-2 frame-offset coordination, we also propose a dynamic MBS zone (DMZ) framework that can provide data continuity between any two adjacent MBS zones. Based on the proposed DMZ framework, a seamless dynamic inter-MBS zone handover (called DMZ HO) scheme is proposed to resolve the data discontinuity (or packet loss) problem during inter-MBS zone HO. Compared to the WiMAX standard scheme, the proposed IFC scheme reduces packet error rate and packet retransmission count by 49.8 and 49.73 %, respectively. The proposed DMZ HO scheme also outperforms an overlapping zones (OLZ) scheme in terms of channel occupation time and channel bandwidth consumption (in terms of channel idle ratio). Therefore, by resolving data discontinuity, the proposed DMZ HO scheme is more cost-effective and more feasible in providing smooth multimedia content delivery services without disruption to multiple mobile stations (MSs) during HO, and thus will enhance user experience.

Experimentally driven quality of experience‐aware multimedia content delivery in modern wireless networks

SummaryIn this paper, a holistic approach for supporting Quality of Experience (QoE)‐aware multimedia content delivery to modern wireless networks is described. The introduced Dynamic User Experience framework, founded on network utility maximization theory, allows mobile users to express their preference with respect to the instantaneous experience of their service performance, through the dynamic adaptation of their service‐aware utility functions. By developing and exploiting an Android‐based mobile multimedia application prototype capable of capturing users' quality perception with respect to multiple psychological and networking factors, an efficient correlation of users' QoE and service performance characteristics is derived. Based on real user data obtained through experimentation, we are able to quantify appropriately defined QoE‐aware utility functions that can be used throughout the overall radio resource management process. Extensive numerical results verify our analytical claims on the efficacy and applicability of the proposed framework in a heterogeneous wireless environment, significantly optimizing mobile Internet experience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Multimedia content delivery trigger in a mobile network to reduce the peak load

Nowadays, smartphones are used to download files such as movies, music, etc. These files present some flexibility in delivery time; we exploit this feature to reduce network overload peaks. If the network is overloaded, downloads are postponed, thus reducing the traffic load during rush hours. We propose an architecture that enables the network to determine the best time to trigger a download that is queued. This architecture is based on a specific server in the network and a mobile application. This contribution describes the proposed architecture, presents the developments that have been made, and analyzes the performance of this novel concept.

How an art gallery is engaging children

Nursery WorldVol. 2014, No. 24 PracticeHow an art gallery is engaging childrenSue OwenSue OwenSearch for more papers by this authorSue OwenPublished Online:16 Dec 2014https://doi.org/10.12968/nuwa.2014.24.18AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleAbstractArt for all: An award-winning art gallery has been running sessions to encourage children to engage with and explore its collections. Sue Owen finds out why the project was a hit with childminders FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byPersonalized multimedia content delivery on an interactive table by passive observation of museum visitors16 August 2014 | Multimedia Tools and Applications, Vol. 75, No. 7 1 December 2014Volume 2014Issue 24ISSN (print): 0029-6422ISSN (online): 2059-9358 Metrics History Published online 16 December 2014 Published in print 1 December 2014 Information© MA Education LimitedPDF download

Tree construction algorithm for virtual content distribution network

Recently, the technology of multimedia content delivery is spotlighted due to many multimedia services. Specially, the needs of a huge content delivery technology is increasing because the period of huge multimedia content creation becomes shorter. The content delivery network (CDN) is a popular solution for distributing a multimedia content using physical resources. However, the CDN cannot provide a flexible service to content providers because of cost issue. In this paper, we aim to build a virtual content delivery network (VCDN) that each service provider own their independent service delivery and distribution network virtually. The proposed VCDN system uses a rateless codes for avoiding computational overhead and limits increase of the streaming delay. The proposed VCDN system builds a hierarchical tree structure that minimizes the time complexity of source nodes and reduces content distribution time by using rateless codes. The proposed VCDN system can support variety of social media services because its flexibility.

Personalized multimedia content delivery on an interactive table by passive observation of museum visitors

The amount of multimedia data collected in museum databases is growing fast, while the capacity of museums to display information to visitors is acutely limited by physical space. Museums must seek the perfect balance of information given on individual pieces in order to provide sufficient information to aid visitor understanding while maintaining sparse usage of the walls and guaranteeing high appreciation of the exhibit. Moreover, museums often target the interests of average visitors instead of the entire spectrum of different interests each individual visitor might have. Finally, visiting a museum should not be an experience contained in the physical space of the museum but a door opened onto a broader context of related artworks, authors, artistic trends, etc. In this paper we describe the MNEMOSYNE system that attempts to address these issues through a new multimedia museum experience. Based on passive observation, the system builds a profile of the artworks of interest for each visitor. These profiles of interest are then used to drive an interactive table that personalizes multimedia content delivery. The natural user interface on the interactive table uses the visitor's profile, an ontology of museum content and a recommendation system to personalize exploration of multimedia content. At the end of their visit, the visitor can take home a personalized summary of their visit on a custom mobile application. In this article we describe in detail each component of our approach as well as the first field trials of our prototype system built and deployed at our permanent exhibition space at LeMurate (http://www.lemurate.comune.fi.it/lemurate/) in Florence together with the first results of the evaluation process during the official installation in the National Museum of Bargello (http://www.uffizi.firenze.it/musei/?m=bargello).

A personalized system for scalable distribution of multimedia content in multicast wireless networks

This paper presents a novel architecture for scalable multimedia content delivery over wireless networks. The architecture takes into account both the user preferences and context in order to provide personalized contents to each user. In this way, third-party applications filter the most appropriate contents for each client in each situation. One of the key characteristics of the proposal is the scalability, which is provided, apart from the use of filtering techniques, through the transmission in multicast networks. In this sense, content delivery is carried out by means of the FLUTE (File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport) protocol, which provides reliability in unidirectional environments through different mechanisms such as AL-FEC (Application Layer – Forward Error Correction) codes, used in this paper. Another key characteristic is the context-awareness and personalization of content delivery, which is provided by means of context information, user profiles, and adaptation. The system proposed is validated through several empirical studies. Specifically, the paper presents evaluations of two types that collect objective and subjective measures. The first evaluate the efficiency of the transmission protocol, analyzing how the use of appropriate transmission parameters reduces the download time (and thus increasing the Quality of Experience), which can be minimized by using caching techniques. On the other hand, the subjective measures present a study about the user experience after testing the application and analyze the accuracy of the filtering process/strategy. Results show that using AL-FEC mechanisms produces download times until four times lower than when no protection is used. Also, results prove that there is a code rate that minimizes the download time depending on the losses and that, in general, code rates 0.7 and 0.9 provide good download times for a wide range of losses. On the other hand, subjective measures indicate a high user satisfaction (more than 80 %) and a relevant degree of accuracy of the content adaption.

Prospects and challenges of context-aware multimedia content delivery in cooperative satellite and terrestrial networks

Cooperative satellite cells and terrestrial wireless communication networks (comprising macrocells, picocells, and the Internet) are much anticipated access technologies to enable users to seamlessly access rich multimedia content (e.g., TV broadcasting, VoD streaming, and other services) on their devices. Furthermore, context awareness has become popular to accompany these services not only to enhance the users' perceived service quality but also to improve the overall utilization of such cooperative networks. However, delivering context-aware multimedia content through these cooperative networks is associated with a significant research challenge due to the inherently different satellites and terrestrial networks technologies. For example, to provide context-specific TV programs to a user, a satellite needs to adopt unicast-style delivery. This may be an expensive operation since satellites are intrinsically useful for broadcasting or multicasting services to a wide audience. In contrast, terrestrial communication networks can be better suited to perform unicast-based context-aware content delivery. In this article, we address these challenges, and propose a dynamic bandwidth allocation method to effectively utilize the satellite and terrestrial networks for providing context-aware contents to many users. Computer-based simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.

Push-Based Wireless Converged Networks for Massive Multimedia Content Delivery

The fast growing wireless data traffics have brought a significant burden on the mobile cellular network and would soon cause severe congestion in the near future. In this paper, we contribute to the design and theoretical understanding of push-based content delivery in a converged broadcasting and cellular network to relieve the burden. Specifically, we are interested in analyzing the scheme in which the most popular contents are pushed through broadcasting to alleviate the cellular data bottleneck. This strategy not only offloads the multimedia traffics from the cellular network, but also improves the user experience by eliminating download waiting time. To evaluate the performance gains of the converged network, we first develop a mathematic framework to model the converged network, the multimedia content characteristics and the mobile user behaviors. The improvement of the network capacity is then derived and quantified theoretically. Furthermore, we obtain valuable insights on the impact of the network resource and parameters on the system performance. Numerical results are provided to confirm the accuracy of the developed analytical results and to show the significant performance advantages of the converged network over the cellular-only network in terms of the system power consumption and users' quality of service (QoS).

Dynamic Resource Allocation and Scheduling for Cloud-Based Virtual Content Delivery Networks

This paper proposes a novel framework for virtual content delivery networks (CDNs) based on cloud computing. The proposed framework aims to provide multimedia content delivery services customized for content providers by sharing virtual machines (VMs) in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud, while fulfilling the service level agreement. Furthermore, it supports elastic virtual CDN services, which enables the capabilities of VMs to be scaled to encompass the dynamically changing resource demand of the aggregated virtual CDN services. For this, we provide the system architecture and relevant operations for the virtual CDNs and evaluate the performance based on a simulation.

Enhanced Power-Friendly Access Network Selection Strategy for Multimedia Delivery Over Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The continuing growth in video content exchanged by mobile users creates challenges for the network service providers in terms of supporting seamless multimedia delivery at high quality levels, especially given the existing wireless network resources. A solution that deals with this mobile broadband data growth is to make use of multiple networks supported by diverse radio access technologies. This multiaccess solution requires innovative network selection mechanisms to keep the mobile users always best connected anywhere and anytime. Additionally, there is a need to develop energy efficient techniques in order to reduce power consumption in next-generation wireless networks, while meeting user quality expectations. In this context, this paper proposes an enhanced power-friendly access network selection solution (E-PoFANS) for multimedia delivery over heterogeneous wireless networks. E-PoFANS enables the battery of the mobile device to last longer, while performing multimedia content delivery, and maintains an acceptable user perceived quality by selecting the network that offers the best energy-quality tradeoff. Based on real test-bed measurements, the proposed solution is modeled and validated through simulations. The results show how by using E-PoFANS, the users achieve up to 30% more energy savings with insignificant degradation in quality, in comparison with another state-of-the-art energy efficient network selection solution.

Control of Multiple Remote Servers for Quality-Fair Delivery of Multimedia Contents

This paper proposes a control scheme for the quality-fair delivery of several encoded video streams to mobile users sharing a common wireless resource. Video quality fairness, as well as similar delivery delays are targeted among streams. The proposed controller is implemented within some aggregator located near the bottleneck of the network. The transmission rate among streams is adapted based on the quality of the already encoded and buffered packets in the aggregator. Encoding rate targets are evaluated by the aggregator and fed back to each remote video server (fully centralized solution), or directly evaluated by each server in a distributed way (partially distributed solution). Each encoding rate target is adjusted for each stream independently based on the corresponding buffer level or buffering delay in the aggregator. Communication delays between the servers and the aggregator are taken into account. The transmission and encoding rate control problems are studied with a control-theoretic perspective. The system is described with a multi-input multi-output model. Proportional Integral (PI) controllers are used to adjust the video quality and control the aggregator buffer levels. The system equilibrium and stability properties are studied. This provides guidelines for choosing the parameters of the PI controllers. Experimental results show the convergence of the proposed control system and demonstrate the improvement in video quality fairness compared to a classical transmission rate fair streaming solution and to a utility max-min fair approach.