Multimedia Content Distribution Research Articles

Nuoxus: A proactive caching model to manage multimedia content distribution on fog radio access networks

One of the most recently proposed 5G architectures, Fog Radio Access Network or F-RAN, has the same cloud computing-based approach of C-RANs while giving additional storage and processing power to the edge nodes so that they can address network activities. The main problem of F-RANs is the intense data traffic in the fronthaul, which is the centralized physical channel used to connect the antennas (F-APs) to the BBU pool. To minimize this bottleneck, we propose the Nuoxus model, whose objective is to cache multimedia content in the edge of the network. By taking advantage of the hierarchical structure of F-RANs, Nuoxus content replacement policy analyses the similarity of requests amongst the children nodes to define the relevance of storing a requested content in cache. It also uses this process to proactively suggest to nodes located lower in the network hierarchy the caching of relevant content. The state-of-the-art analysis reveals Nuoxus as the first model to explore the nodes' request history to perform proactive caching without relying on external and centralized components. Furthermore, the developed proof-of-concept shows significant gains when compared to other caching strategies.

Channel estimation with Bayesian framework based on compressed sensing algorithm in multimedia transmission system

With the emergence of Wireless multimedia transmission system, the distribution of multimedia contents has now become a reality. To solve the problem of stability in the process of transmission, this paper proposes an improved channel estimation with Bayesian framework based on compressed sensing algorithm in multimedia transmission system. The algorithm uses the sparse characteristics of the channel and can reduce the pilot sequence length under the same conditions. Due to the high complexity of the support agnostic Bayesian matching pursuit algorithm, our algorithm improves the support set, which proposed Expectation Prune Matching Pursuit algorithm in the paper. At each sparsity level of the channel, an expanded support set is given by adding some positions corresponding to the atoms that have a larger inner product value with the current residual signal. Then the best support set is obtained by removing the wrong positions and adopting the idea of Bayesian estimation algorithm in the expanded support set. The estimated channel and the relative probability of the best support set at each sparse level are calculated. Finally, the expectation of the channel is calculated and regarded as the estimation of the channel. Compared with comparison algorithm in the error and bit error rate under different SNR conditions, our proposed algorithm can reduce the computational complexity while maintaining the estimation accuracy.

Energy-Aware Concurrent Multipath Transfer for Real-Time Video Streaming Over Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The advancements in networking technologies and hand-held devices enable mobile users to concurrently receive real-time multimedia streaming (e.g., high-definition video) with different radio interfaces (e.g., Wi-Fi and LTE networks). Stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) is an important transport-layer solution to implement concurrent multipath transfer (CMT) over heterogeneous wireless networks with multihomed terminals. However, it is challenging to distribute multimedia content to resource-limited mobile devices because of the contradiction between energy consumption and streaming quality. To deliver the energy-efficient and quality-aware multimedia streaming over multiple wireless networks, this paper presents an Energy and goodPut Optimized CMT (EPOC) solution. First, we develop an analytical framework to model the relationship between energy consumption and goodput performance for real-time multimedia transmission to multihomed mobile devices. Second, we propose a joint forward error correction coding and rate allocation scheme to minimize energy consumption while satisfying goodput constraint. EPOC effectively leverages the energy-goodput tradeoff and multipath diversity to optimize mobile multimedia transmission in heterogeneous networking environment. We conduct the performance evaluation through extensive semi-physical emulations in Exata involving H.264 video streaming. Compared with the reference CMT schemes using SCTP, EPOC achieves appreciable improvements in energy conservation, goodput, and video peak signal-to-noise ratio.

A Joint Framework for QoS and QoE for Video Transmission over Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

With the emergence of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs), the distribution of multimedia contents have now become a reality. Without proper management, the transmission of multimedia data over WMSNs affects the performance of networks due to excessive packet-drop. The existing studies on Quality of Service (QoS) mostly deal with simple Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and as such do not account for an increasing number of sensor nodes and an increasing volume of data. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to support QoS in WMSNs along with a light-weight Error Concealment (EC) scheme. The EC schemes play a vital role to enhance Quality of Experience (QoE) by maintaining an acceptable quality at the receiving ends. The main objectives of the proposed framework are to maximize the network throughput and to cover-up the effects produced by dropped video packets. To control the data-rate, Scalable High efficiency Video Coding (SHVC) is applied at multimedia sensor nodes with variable Quantization Parameters (QPs). Multi-path routing is exploited to support real-time video transmission. Experimental results show that the proposed framework can efficiently adjust large volumes of video data under certain network distortions and can effectively conceal lost video frames by producing better objective measurements.

Delay-Aware Quality Optimization in Cloud-Assisted Video Streaming System

Cloud-assisted video streaming has emerged as a new paradigm to optimize multimedia content distribution over the Internet. This article investigates the problem of streaming cloud-assisted real-time video to multiple destinations (e.g., cloud video conferencing, multi-player cloud gaming, etc.) over lossy communication networks. The user diversity and network dynamics result in the delay differences among multiple destinations. This research proposes <underline>D</underline>ifferentiated cloud-<underline>A</underline>ssisted <underline>VI</underline>deo <underline>S</underline>treaming (DAVIS) framework, which proactively leverages such delay differences in video coding and transmission optimization. First, we analytically formulate the optimization problem of joint coding and transmission to maximize received video quality. Second, we develop a quality optimization framework that integrates the video representation selection and FEC (Forward Error Correction) packet interleaving. The proposed DAVIS is able to effectively perform differentiated quality optimization for multiple destinations by taking advantage of the delay differences in cloud-assisted video streaming system. We conduct the performance evaluation through extensive experiments with the Amazon EC2 instances and Exata emulation platform. Evaluation results show that DAVIS outperforms the reference cloud-assisted streaming solutions in video quality and delay performance.

Mobile Multi-Source High Quality Multimedia Delivery Scheme

Increasing amount of multimedia content is being delivered over heterogeneous networks to diverse user types, holding various devices, many of them mobile. Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have already become both consumers and sources of multimedia content, but the delivery quality varies widely, especially due to their users’ mobility. In order to support increasing the quality of the multimedia content delivered to a growing number of mobile users, this paper introduces a mobile multi-source high quality multimedia delivery scheme (M3QD). M3QD supports efficient high quality multimedia content delivery to mobile users from multiple sources. Both simulations and prototyping-based perceptual tests show how increased user perceived video quality and improved mobility support is achieved when using M3QD in comparison with the case when a single source classic approach is employed. M3QD can be used in various scenarios involving multimedia content distribution between mobile users in leisure parks or around tourist attractions, content exchange between vehicles on urban roads and even information delivery in industrial applications, where content has to be shared between large number or diverse mobile users.

NDNrel: A mechanism based on relations among objects to improve the performance of NDN

Named-Data Networking (NDN) is a promising architectural approach that focuses on the efficient distribution of data objects. Each of these objects represents an individual piece of content that is uniquely named and can be cached by network nodes. Recent work on Information-Centric Networking (ICN) explores new uses of the data object concept to enable advanced applications based on content distribution. Such work includes the use of metadata and manifests to describe contents as sets of multiple correlated objects. In this paper, we extend our previous work on a model and a backward-compatible mechanism, named NDNrel, that allows publishers to distribute contents as related objects. The new version of NDNrel reduces the cost of distributing relation information to clients by leveraging the usage of metadata and manifests on ICN architectures. Also, it considers additional aspects such as the authentication of relations and data that comprise the content. The evaluation of NDNrel is revisited and extended to analyze the performance and overhead caused by the usage of the proposed relation model in two scenarios: distribution of multimedia and Web content. Results demonstrate that using NDNrel to structure the contents as objects and relations outperforms default NDN, reducing the average client download time and the global network traffic in at least 28% and 34% respectively.

CBIR을 위한 코너패치 기반 재배열 DCT특징 분석

In modern society, creation and distribution of multimedia contents is being actively conducted. These multimedia information have come out the enormous amount daily, the amount of data is also large enough it can’t be compared with past text information. Since it has been increased for a need of the method to efficiently store multimedia information and to easily search the information, various methods associated therewith have been actively studied. In particular, image search methods for finding what you want from the video database or multiple sequential images, have attracted attention as a new field of image processing. Image retrieval method to be implemented in this paper, utilizes the attribute of corner patches based on the corner points of the object, for providing a new method of efficient and robust image search. After detecting the edge of the object within the image, the straight lines using a Hough transformation is extracted. A corner patches is formed by defining the extracted intersection of the straight line as a corner point. After configuring the feature vectors with patches rearranged, the similarity between images in the database is measured. Finally, for an accurate comparison between the proposed algorithm and existing algorithms, the recall precision rate, which has been widely used in content-based image retrieval was used to measure the performance evaluation. For the image used in the experiment, it was confirmed that the image is detected more accurately in the proposed method than the conventional image retrieval methods

Light-Weight Feedback Mechanism for WiFi Multicast to Very Large Groups—Experimental Evaluation

WiFi networks have been globally deployed and most mobile devices are currently WiFi-enabled. While WiFi has been proposed for multimedia content distribution, its lack of adequate support for multicast services hinders its ability to provide multimedia content distribution to a large number of devices. In this paper, we present the AMuSe system, whose objective is to enable scalable and adaptive WiFi multicast services. AMuSe is based on accurate receiver feedback and incurs a small control overhead. In particular, we develop an algorithm for dynamic selection of a subset of the multicast receivers as feedback nodes, which periodically send information about the channel quality to the multicast sender. This feedback information can be used by the multicast sender to optimize multicast service quality, e.g., by dynamically adjusting transmission bitrate. AMuSe does not require any changes to the standards or any modifications to the WiFi devices. We implemented AMuSe on the ORBIT testbed and evaluated its performance in large groups with approximately 200 WiFi devices , both with and without interference sources. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that AMuSe can provide accurate feedback in a dense multicast environment. It outperforms several alternatives even in the case of external interference and changing network conditions.

CyVOD: a novel trinity multimedia social network scheme

How to comprehensively explore, improve and deploy multimedia social networks (MSNs) has become a hot topic in the era of emerging pervasive mobile multimedia. More and more MSNs offer a great number of convenient tools, services, and applications for multimedia contents including video and audio that users share willingly and on demand. However, concerns with digital rights management (DRM)-oriented multimedia security, as well as the efficiency of multimedia usage and sharing are meanwhile intensified due to easier distribution and reproduction of multimedia content in a wide range of social networks. The paper proposes a comprehensive framework for multimedia social network, and realized a cross-platform MSN prototype system, named as CyVOD, to support two kinds of DRM modes. The proposed framework effectively protects copyrighted multimedia contents against piracy, and supports a more efficient recommendation system for its better handling of the tradeoff between multimedia security and ease of use.

Guest Editorial: Pervasive Multimedia Computing—Systems Applications and Services

The advent of techniques in pervasive computing has affected human life that freely uses Internet environment, and advances in ubiquitous networks, telecommunications, and information technology, along with the proliferation of multimedia smart devices—such as laptops, iPods, personal digital assistants (PDA), and cellular telephones—have stimulated the development of intelligent pervasive multimedia applications. These key technologies are creating a multimedia revolution that will have significant impact across a wide spectrum to consumer, business, healthcare, and governmental domains. Yet, many challenges remain, especially when it comes to efficiently indexing, mining, querying, searching, and retrieving multimedia data. This special issue attempts to offer an open discussion in the realm of pervasive multimedia computing, including efficient delivery and distribution of multimedia content, applications, and services over the wired and wireless networks as well as multimedia QoS support for such networks. This issue also interests in looking at service architectures, protocols, and standards for multimedia communications along with the related security issues, such as secure multimedia information sharing. Finally, this issue expects to explore works on novel applications Multimed Tools Appl (2016) 75:14015–14017 DOI 10.1007/s11042-016-3826-z

Secure Multimedia Content Distribution for M2M Communication

Multimedia content distribution based on M2M communication is attracting increasing attentions nowadays. Considering that multimedia will be widely used in various applications over M2M network, the wide range of multimedia content and M2M devices has raised new security requirements for multimedia communication. In this paper, we focus on an aspect of DRM that involves secure multimedia distribution which combines multimedia encryption, copy detection, and digital fingerprinting to prevent widespread piracy. Multimedia encryption is used to encrypt multimedia content firstly before distribution, then, Copy detection is used to verify whether a protected multimedia content is a redistributed copy of its or no, At last, digital fingerprinting is introduced to protect multimedia content further. In this paper, we first use using encryption, fingerprinting and copy detection for secure distribution in M2M communication environments. The secure effect of the proposed scheme has been verified through theory analysis and experimental results.

PSUM: Peer-to-peer multimedia content distribution using collusion-resistant fingerprinting

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for multimedia distribution has spread out globally in recent years. The mass popularity is primarily driven by cost-effective distribution of content, also giving rise to piracy. An end user (buyer/peer) of a P2P content distribution system does not want to reveal his/her identity during a transaction with a content owner (merchant), whereas the merchant does not want the buyer to further distribute the content illegally. To date, different P2P distribution systems have been proposed that provide copyright and privacy protection at a cost of high computational burden at the merchant׳s and/or at the buyer׳s end and thus, making these systems impractical. In this paper, we propose PSUM, a P2P content distribution system which allows efficient distribution of large-sized multimedia content while preserving the security and privacy of merchants and buyers. The security of PSUM is ensured by using an asymmetric fingerprinting protocol based on collusion-resistant codes. In addition, PSUM enables buyers to obtain digital contents anonymously, but this anonymity can be revoked as soon as he/she is found guilty of copyright violation. The paper presents a thorough performance analysis of PSUM, through different experiments and simulations, and also analyzes several security compromising attacks and countermeasures.

Efficient entertainment services provision over a novel network architecture

The provision of entertainment services through current network infrastructures generates a significant part of global Internet traffic. Such traffic is created by users who are interconnected through social media networks, distributing multimedia content, as well as through their online games interaction, leading to a significant increase in data traffic demands. At the same time, users demand the high-quality content delivery necessary for such multimedia-based services and applications. In this article, a novel network architecture is proposed that exploits a resource prediction engine to predict the upcoming demands on resources for the optimal distribution of streaming data among content delivery networks, emerging mobile networks, cloudbased providers, and home media gateways. Performance evaluation experiments carried out under controlled conditions verify the validity of the proposed network architecture and establish its effectiveness for efficient resources prediction during the provision of entertainment services.

Secure social multimedia content distribution based on social network analysis

Multimedia fingerprinting is an effective technique to trace traitor who redistribute copyrighted social multimedia contents. However, several traitors can make an average collusion attack with their fingerprinted copies to avoid to be traced by digital fingerprints; furthermore, the commercial value of the colluded fingerprinted copy is often time-sensitive in social networks. The earlier the colluded content being redistributed in social network, the more profit the colluder will make from it. In this paper, a new desynchronisation fingerprinting is proposed. Random grid templates are used to produce desynchronised copies. This research has dealt with random distortions due to local geometric transformations of random grid template of image based on chaos, and then the processed fingerprinted content is distributed using social network analysis. The experimental results show that the average collusion will produce collude copy with low commercial value, and although colluders can try to use image registration to resynchronisation with expensive computational cost, and the visual quality does not improve with the increase of the number of copies.

Secure social multimedia content distribution based on social network analysis

Multimedia fingerprinting is an effective technique to trace traitor who redistribute copyrighted social multimedia contents. However, several traitors can make an average collusion attack with their fingerprinted copies to avoid to be traced by digital fingerprints; furthermore, the commercial value of the colluded fingerprinted copy is often time-sensitive in social networks. The earlier the colluded content being redistributed in social network, the more profit the colluder will make from it. In this paper, a new desynchronisation fingerprinting is proposed. Random grid templates are used to produce desynchronised copies. This research has dealt with random distortions due to local geometric transformations of random grid template of image based on chaos, and then the processed fingerprinted content is distributed using social network analysis. The experimental results show that the average collusion will produce collude copy with low commercial value, and although colluders can try to use image registration to resynchronisation with expensive computational cost, and the visual quality does not improve with the increase of the number of copies.

Optimizing random network coding for multimedia content distribution over smartphones

It is known that random network coding (RNC) technology helps enhance multimedia content distribution systems in various ways; however, the enhancement can vary widely depending on how the technology is realized in the systems. RNC technology entails an encoding process at the server-side and a decoding process at the clients. Typically, the decoding process is the bottleneck especially when resource-limited mobile clients such as smartphones are employed. Thus, to fully exploit the benefit of RNC technology, it is crucial to maximize throughput and minimize latency of the decoding process of RNC at the client-side. In this paper, we explore the implementation space of RNC on smartphone platforms and propose best practices that optimize RNC performance on smartphone in terms of decoding throughput (or delay) as well as energy consumption. Via experimental results, we show that our proposal for optimizing RNC achieves throughput enhancement along with energy conservation at the same time on smartphones.

A Robust Multimedia Contents Distribution over IP based Mobile Networks

Multimedia contents distribution over open networks such as the Internet poses numerous issues as to security and mobility. This paper deals with the design of a robust multimedia contents distribution scheme to which it implements both security and mobility. The architecture for its distribution is presented and discussed. The operational functions have been identified that presents security and mobility for its distribution over IP based mobile networks.

Service level agreement management framework for utility-oriented computing platforms

With the increasing popularity of utility-oriented computing where the resources are traded as services, efficient management of quality of service (QoS) has become increasingly significant to both service consumers and service providers. In the context of distributed multimedia content adaptation deployment on service-oriented computing, how to ensure the stringent QoS requirements of the content adaptation is a significant and immediate challenge. However, QoS guarantees in the distributed multimedia content adaptation deployment on service-oriented platform context have not been accorded the attention it deserves. In this paper, we address this problem. We formulate the SLA management for distributed multimedia content adaptation deployment on service-oriented computing as an integer programming problem. We propose an SLA management framework that enables the service provider to determine deliverable QoS before settling SLA with potential service consumers to optimize QoS guarantees. We analyzed the performance of the proposed strategy under various conditions in terms of the SLA success rate, rejection rate and impact of the resource data errors on potential violation of the agreed upon SLA. We also compared the proposed SLA management framework with a baseline approach in which the distributed multimedia content adaptation is deployed on a service-oriented platform without SLA consideration. The results of the experiments show that the proposed SLA management framework substantially outperforms the baseline approach confirming that SLA management is a core requirement for the deployment of distributed multimedia content adaptation on service-oriented systems.

Improved Privacy-Preserving P2P Multimedia Distribution Based on Recombined Fingerprints

Anonymous fingerprint has been suggested as a convenient solution for the legal distribution of multimedia contents with copyright protection whilst preserving the privacy of buyers, whose identities are only revealed in case of illegal re-distribution. However, most of the existing anonymous fingerprinting protocols are impractical for two main reasons: 1) the use of complex time-consuming protocols and/or homomorphic encryption of the content, and 2) a unicast approach for distribution that does not scale for a large number of buyers. This paper stems from a previous proposal of recombined fingerprints which overcomes some of these drawbacks. However, the recombined fingerprint approach requires a complex graph search for traitor tracing, which needs the participation of other buyers, and honest proxies in its P2P distribution scenario. This paper focuses on removing these disadvantages resulting in an efficient, scalable, privacy-preserving and P2P-based fingerprinting system.