Multimedia Content Delivery Research Articles

TalkTrek: Journeying Through the Terrain of Text-based Speech Synthesis

Abstract: This research paper delves into the development and evaluation of TextTalker, an innovative voice-enabled education chatbot designed to enhance learning experiences. TextTalker integrates advanced natural language processing capabilities with voice recognition technology to facilitate seamless interactions between users and educational content. Furthermore, it incorporates a unique feature allowing users to access relevant YouTube videos directly within the chat interface, fostering a multi-modal learning environment. The system's architecture and design are meticulously crafted to ensure user engagement, accessibility, and effectiveness in delivering educational materials. Through a series of usability studies and user feedback analysis, this research evaluates the efficacy of TextTalker in supporting learning objectives and enhancing user satisfaction. The findings reveal promising results, indicating high levels of user engagement and satisfaction with the platform's intuitive interface and diverse learning resources. Moreover, incorporating feedback mechanisms empowers users to contribute to the refinement and enhancement of TextTalker's functionalities, fostering a collaborative learning ecosystem. Overall, TextTalker represents a significant advancement in educational technology, offering a user-centric approach to interactive learning through voice-enabled chatbots integrated with multimedia content delivery and feedback mechanisms

Social media interaction and analytics for enhanced educational experiences

In this paper we present an innovative system based on social media and high quality multimedia content delivery designed to enhance the educational experiences of students in cultural centers and museums. The system brings together students that are viewing an educational movie with a panel of experts that may be geographically dispersed, and engages them in an exciting social media experience via which they can interact with each other as well as with the remote experts. We employ appropriate methodologies for monitoring and analysing social network activity in order to extract valuable information from the social network activity and use it to seamlessly annotate in real-time the presented educational movie using anthropocentric semantic extraction based on MPEG-7. In this way, the multimedia content of the presented movie can be easily reviewed by multiple geographically dispersed individuals, and impoved afterwards according to the received feedback, thus maximising the benefit for students, teachers and content producers alike.

Intelligent multimedia content delivery in 5G/6G networks: A reinforcement learning approach

AbstractMultimedia content in 5G/6G networks makes safe, confidential, and efficient content delivery difficult. Intelligent systems that adapt to the ever‐changing network environment are needed to distribute multimedia content in these networks. Reinforcement learning (RL) can optimize multimedia content distribution based on network congestion, capacity, and user preferences. This study proposes RL‐based intelligent multimedia content distribution. RL algorithms learn from the network environment and generate optimum judgments incorporating several aspects of the suggested framework. The framework delivers multimedia material securely and privately with great quality. This study provides an intelligent multimedia content delivery architecture that uses RL approaches to solve 5G/6G content delivery problems. This research presents an RL system optimized with the double DQN algorithm having a reward of 51604.93 in 7000 episodes for efficient video file sharing on intracity buses. The RL agent balances network congestion and bandwidth by leveraging multiple sources such as bus and intersection caches and base stations, improving secure multimedia content delivery in 5G/6G networks and enhancing the passenger experience. The study confirms the system's effectiveness using reward and loss metrics and identifies potential future research directions. Future work could explore additional RL algorithms, scalability for larger networks, complex delivery scenarios, and integration with blockchain and edge computing for improved security and efficiency in multimedia content delivery.

Challenges and Opportunities in QoS Enhancement for Internet-Based Multimedia Communication

Advancements in communication technologies have fueled the rapid expansion of the multimedia content delivery market, encompassing various media types such as images, audio, and video. Personal communication, computing, broadcasting, and entertainment heavily rely on multimedia content, which is transmitted through diverse communication and network technologies to reach a wide range of devices. QoS requirements for multimedia services are determined by parameters including bandwidth flexibility, low end-to-end delay, minimal delay variation, and acceptable error rates. These parameters are interconnected and vary depending on the type of multimedia application. However, the QoS needs of multimedia communications cannot be fully met by the internet's basic infrastructure. Mechanisms for ensuring QoS guarantees over the Internet have been developed through extensive research and development. This study examines developments, difficulties, and strategies for improving the transmission of multimedia content over the Internet, providing an overview of the methodologies and strategies used to satisfy QoS criteria in multimedia communications.

Smart optimization in 802.11p media access control protocol for vehicular ad hoc network

<span lang="EN-US">The innovative idea presented in this research is that advancements in automotive networks and embedded devices can be used to assess the impact of congestion control on throughput and packet delivery ratio (PDR), or so-called multimedia content delivery. Vehicle networking and the distribution of multimedia content have become essential factors in getting packets to their intended recipients due to the availability of bandwidth. Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication systems are crucial in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), which permit vehicles to connect by distributing and delivering traffic data and transmission packet schemes. High levels of mobility and changing network topology necessitate dispersed monitoring and execution for congestion control. The amount of traffic congestion for packet transfers could be reduced by enhancing congestion management in terms of throughput and PDR percentages. In a highway setting, the Taguchi approach has been used to optimize the parameters for congestion control. Based on throughput and PDR performance measures, this technique minimizes superfluous traffic information and lowers the likelihood of network congestion. The simulation results have shown that the proposed approach performs better since it increases network performance while effectively utilizing bandwidth. The effectiveness of the suggested technique is evaluated using a typical VANETs scenario for V2I communication while driving on a highway.</span>

Exploring the Effects of LED-Based Visible Light Communication on Reading and Color Perception in Indoor Environments: An Experimental Study.

Visible light communications (VLC) is a technology that enables the transmission of digital information with a light source. VLC is nowadays seen as a promising technology for indoor applications, helping WiFi to handle the spectrum crunch. Possible indoor applications range from Internet connection at home/office to multimedia content delivery in a museum. Despite the vast interest of researchers in both theoretical analysis and experimentation on VLC technology, no studies have been carried out on the human perceptions of objects illuminated by VLC-based lamps. It is important to define if a VLC lamp decreases the reading capability or modifies the color perception in order to make VLC a technology appropriate for everyday life use. This paper describes the results of psychophysical tests on humans to define if VLC lamps modify the perception of colors or the reading speed. The results of the reading speed test showed a 0.97 correlation coefficient between tests with and without VLC modulated light, leading us to conclude that there is no difference in the reading speed capability with and without VLC-modulated light. The results of the color perception test showed a Fisher exact test p-value of 0.2351, showing that the perception of color is not influenced by the presence of the VLC modulated light.

Performance Evaluation of UDSM Network to Deliver Multimedia eLearning Contents: Case of CoICT

The use of technology in education in Sub-Saharan Africa has been reported to be hindered by many factors including inadequate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, low internet speed, and lack of skills to use educational technologies. This paper aim at evaluating how the available ICT infrastructure at the College of Information and Communication Technologies (CoICT) can support, with acceptable Quality of Service (QoS), the delivery of multimedia applications for eLearning services. The evaluation was performed over a network testbed implemented in a computer laboratory for wired and wireless connections. The testbed consisted of five personal computers (PCs) connected via a switch and a router to the internet for the wired connection. The wireless connection consisted of three PCs and a laptop connected through a switch and a router to the internet via a wireless access point. Four different multimedia applications were run through the PCs, and traffic data was mirrored and captured at one of the PC using Wireshark network analyzer. The traffic included streamed and conversational video and audio using YouTube and Zoom applications, respectively; interactive web browsing using web browsers; bulk file transfer, and a mixture of all applications running on the computers. Traffic data captured during the running of these applications were packet loss, delay, jitter, and throughput. The QoS performance parameters obtained were within the acceptable threshold values as per International Telecommunication Union, Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) values. Results revealed that ICT infrastructure at CoICT can support delivery of multimedia content for eLearning purposes for both wired and wireless connections. Having the infrastructure capable of supporting multimedia applications with the acceptable QoS implies that instructors are equipped with a conducive environment that supports multimedia application. Hence, they are expected to use and continue using educational technologies to facilitate teaching and learning processes.

CHANNEL MODELING OF THE OTH OPTICAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEM WITH QUADRATURE AMPLITUDE MODULATION

The rapid development of services for providing broadband access to the Internet and multimedia content delivery services required the widespread use of fiber optic transmission systems (FOTS) for the transmission of digital traffic. The transmitter signal passes through an optical line, which includes optical fiber and optical amplifiers. In the optical fiber, linear and nonlinear distortions are introduced into the signal, and optical amplifiers generate additive noise of amplified spontaneous emission. In this paper, we develop a model of the optical channel of OTH system with QAM modulation, which takes into account linear and nonlinear distortions of the optical propagation medium and additive noise of the amplified spontaneous radiation of optical amplifiers. To obtain accurate results, the method of simulation modeling was used. The block diagram of the developed model contains a transmitter, an optical line and a coherent receiver of the optical signal. The expression for the time form of the electric field intensity of the optical signal at the transmitter output is given. Modeling of the optical fiber was performed by the split step Fourier method. The noise of the amplified spontaneous emission of optical amplifiers was formed in the frequency domain by means of the Fourier transform operation. The quality of the optical channel was estimated by calculating the average value of the Q-factor of the optical signal at the receiver output. The dependence of the Q-factor from the number of sections of the optical line and the power level of the optical signal was obtained. It is shown that to maximize the quality characteristics of the optical channel, the optimal value of the signal power should be used. The comparison of the obtained results with the data from specialized software products is carried out. Sufficient accuracy of the proposed model was demonstrated. It is recommended to use the developed channel model in the design of new and modernization of existing fragments of networks based on OTH systems with QAM modulation.

Satellite multi-beam multicast support for an efficient community-based CDN

The design and implementation of an efficient end-to-end IP-based infrastructure for the delivery of multimedia content is of paramount importance in current public networks, dominated by the constant growth of video streaming traffic. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) represent the main technological solution to manage the huge volumes of traffic involved, by guaranteeing high quality levels to applications and low impact to the core networks, thanks to the efficient distribution of content among edge caches that are located as close as possible to end-users. Nonetheless, the hierarchical data distribution associated with CDNs can be in principle subject to inefficiencies, as well as performance limitations in case of congested segments along the end-to-end delivery path. In this context, we propose the exploitation of satellite multicast capabilities offered by modern high throughput satellite (HTS) platforms, in a virtualized-compatible model, to compensate for flaws of terrestrial networks. The role of satellite communication is to offer multicast support (as a complement to landline connectivity) with wide geographical service areas based on the available satellite beams, enabling a popularity-based content distribution support. In addition, multi-beam satellite technology allows for a more fine-grained approach to popularity evaluation based on user location. The proposed service and the related network configuration are described in the paper, in relation with current and future SatCom platforms. We then present the results of the proposed CDN caching algorithms in a simulated environment, showing promising results associated with a preliminary performance evaluation.

Prototype for Multimedia Content Delivery based on Non-Transmittable Codewords Enhanced Viterbi Algorithm

The paper provides a prototype for multimedia content delivery with reduced channel code rate from conventional Non-Transmittable Codewords Enhanced Viterbi Algorithm. The code rate reduction was simulated using VB.NET Viterbi simulator available at College of Informatics and Virtual Education-University of Dodoma. The study approximates Uplink and downlink speeds limits of the prototype using High Speed Packet Access Evolved technology by assuming all other parameters remain constant. The uplink and downlink of the prototype is clearly presented. The code rate of 1/3 was obtained by simulating different 8-bits patterns. This code rate of 1/3 enabled reduction of encoder output bits from 48-bits to 24-bits, therefore, few bits would be sent to the network and bandwidth conservation is attained. This makes the prototype to be the good choice for low network bandwidth channel. In addition, the reduced code rate will reduce the expenses of user internet bundles, because number of MBs to be charged will be smaller. This prototype for multimedia delivery over network has three benefits, high data transmission reliability due to adopted NTC Enhanced Viterbi, minimum network bandwidth utilization and satisfied uplink and downlink access speed.

Multimedia content delivery services in the cloud with partial sleep and abandonment

Multimedia content delivery services in the cloud with partial sleep and abandonment

Multiple Description Coding for Enhancing Outage and Video Performance Over Relay-Assisted Cognitive Radio Networks

Multimedia content delivery, such as video transmission over wireless networks, imposes significant challenges include spectrum capacity and packet losses. The cognitive radio (CR) technology is developed to solve the spectrum issue, while multiple description coding (MDC) is one of the promising source coding techniques to alleviate packet loss problems and exploit the benefit of path diversity. The source information was split into several descriptions in MDC, then transmitted over a network with multiple paths. The quality of the received data increases with the number of descriptions received at the receiver. In this paper, the proposed system comprises of relay-assisted cognitive radio network using the MDC technique for video transmission. In the simulations, the outage performance of the MDC scheme over two networks, which were relay-assisted network and non-relay network, were compared. Then, the outage probability was used to estimate the video quality, peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) of the received video. The results obtained show the benefits of the relay assisted networks by 9% improvement on average outage performance over the non-relay network. Furthermore, the video performance improved by an average of 9% in PSNR compared to the non-relay system.

Does the Method of Content Delivery Matter? Randomized Controlled Comparison of an Internet-Based Intervention for Eating Disorder Symptoms With and Without Interactive Functionality

Despite their potential as a scalable, cost-effective intervention format, self-guided Internet-based interventions for eating disorder (ED) symptoms continue to be associated with suboptimal rates of adherence and retention. Improving this may depend on the design of an Internet intervention and its method of content delivery, with interactive programs expected to be more engaging than static, text-based programs. However, causal evidence for the added benefits of interactive functionality is lacking. We conducted a randomized controlled comparison of an Internet-based intervention for ED symptoms with and without interactive functionality. Participants were randomized to a 4-week interactive (n = 148) or static (n = 145) version of an Internet-based, cognitive-behavioral program. The interactive version included diverse multimedia content delivery channels (video tutorials, graphics, written text), a smartphone app allowing users to complete the required homework exercises digitally (quizzes, symptom tracking, self-assessments), and progress monitoring features. The static version delivered identical intervention content but only via written text, and contained none of those interactive features. Dropout rates were high overall (58%), but were significantly—yet slightly—lower for the interactive (51%) compared to the static intervention (65%). There were no significant differences in adherence rates and symptom-level improvements between the two conditions. Adding basic interactive functionality to a digital intervention may help with study retention. However, present findings challenge prior speculations that interactive features are crucial for enhancing user engagement and symptom improvement.

Editorial for Wiley's IJSCN Special Issue “Satellite networks integration with 5G”

Editorial for Wiley's IJSCN Special Issue “Satellite networks integration with 5G”

Antennas and Propagation Aspects for Emerging Wireless Communication Technologies

The increasing demand for high data rate applications and the delivery of zero-latency multimedia content drives technological evolutions towards the design and implementation of next-generation broadband wireless networks [...]

Toward 6G Architecture for Energy-Efficient Communication in IoT-Enabled Smart Automation Systems

Energy-efficient communication has become the center of attention from various interdisciplinary fields, such as industrial automation, healthcare, and transportation, among others. Besides, proliferation in the artificial intelligence (AI)-based sixth-generation (6G) technology for achieving the smart automation system has caught the attention of both academia and industry. Most of the intelligent automation systems are formed by IoT-based user terminal (UT) devices for multimedia (i.e., video, audio, image, and text) content delivery with high clarity and efficiency. Customer satisfaction/perception, i.e., Quality of Experience (QoE), is an essential factor to be analyzed because the Quality of Service (QoS) is not a suitable candidate to portray the feelings and expectations of users during multimedia transmission. Therefore, the energy-efficient, entropy-aware communication, and QoE analysis through IoT devices are the dire need. This article focuses on how the energy-efficient communication and user's QoE level can be captured through the UT device during multimedia transmission. Thus first, QoS-based joint energy and entropy optimization (QJEEO) algorithm is proposed. Second, the 6G-driven multimedia data structure model and framework are developed for modeling and evaluation of QoE with acquisition time. Third, the relationship between subjective test score (i.e., surveyed data) and objective performance metrics with mobility/speed of IoT-based devices for multimedia service is established. Fourth, the correlation model is proposed for integrating QoS parameters with estimated QoE perceptions. The experimental results indicate that QoE is modeled and evaluated with acquisition time and correlated with QoS parameter, i.e., packet loss ratio (PLR), and average transfer delay during energy-efficient multimedia transmission in 6G-based networks to improve the satisfaction level of customers.

An integrated satellite–terrestrial 5G network and its use to demonstrate 5G use cases

SummaryIn this paper, we present a satellite‐integrated 5G testbed that was produced for the EU‐commissioned Satellite and Terrestrial Networks for 5G (SaT5G) project. We first describe the testbed's 3GPP Rel. 15/6‐compliant mobile core and radio access network (RAN) that have been established at the University of Surrey. We then detail how satellite NTN UE and gateway components were integrated into the testbed using virtualization and software‐defined orchestration. The satellite element provides 5G backhaul, which in concert with the terrestrial/mobile segment of the testbed forms a fully integrated end‐to‐end (E2E) 5G network. This hybrid 5G network exercised and validated the four major use cases defined within the SaT5G project: cell backhaul, edge delivery of multimedia content, multicast and caching for media delivery and multilinking using satellite and terrestrial. In this document, we describe the MEC implementations developed to address each of the aforementioned use cases and explore how each MEC system integrates into the 5G network. We also provide measurements from trials of the use cases over a live GEO satellite system and indicate in each case the improvements that result from the use of satellite in the 5G network.

Cooperative Content Caching in MEC-Enabled Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Multimedia content delivery via the cellular infrastructure increases fast due to the very high volumes of mobile video traffic generated by the billions of end devices populating the mobile data network. A critical mass of mobile video content requests refers to the consumption of the same popular video content, which is consumed by different end terminals spanning small geographical regions. Such content requests place a great burden on the backhaul of content-agnostic cellular networks, which fail to exploit the correlation of video requests to decongest their backhaul links. This creates redundant retransmissions while fetching the same video content from a central server to the network edge, using the bandwidth-limited backhaul at peak-time periods. With the integration of multi-access edge computing (MEC) capabilities in 5G mobile cellular networks, mobile network operators can place popular video content closer to the network edge at off-peak time periods, predicting user requests exhibiting a high correlation for a given time interval over smaller geographical regions. In this paper, we investigate popular content placement in multi-tier heterogeneous cellular networks where the edge network infrastructure can cooperate to create content delivery (and placement) clusters to effectively serve correlated video requests. To this end, we model the cooperative content placement problem using the multiple knapsack problem (MKP) formulation and present an exact (optimal) bound-and-bound strategy to solve it. The performance of the proposed strategy is evaluated in-depth using extensive system-level simulations and is compared against that of other state-of-the-art algorithms. Valuable design guidelines and key performance trade-offs are discussed, paving the way towards cluster-based cooperative caching in MEC-enabled cellular network setups.

FellowMe Cache: Fog Computing approach to enhance (QoE) in Internet of Vehicles

Among metrics that highly affect video quality and quality of experience (QoE), we can cite the delay and cost transmission caused by mobile network overhead. Moreover, Information centric networking (ICN) is a new architecture that is proposed as a technique that offers very high throughput rates and very low latency, especially in QoE sensitive applications such as multimedia content delivery for the future communication networks. Indeed, unused memory in user equipment can be used to cache contents and afford it to the other nearby users on demand. This caching method is considered as one of the most promising solutions to enhance the QoE of users. On the other hand, one of the major research goals is to improve caching nodes decision based on nodes’ characteristics. In this paper, we propose a new programmable architecture named FollowMeCache based on Software Defined Network (SDN), ICN approaches and Fog Computing for cache node selection using the Connected Dominating Sets (CDS) in order to reduce the download delay and cost for the users’ requested video. In fact, we define cache node selection algorithm based on Influence factor to elect the appropriate nodes from the CDS set to build the cache. This metric takes into consideration the connectivity degree, Zone of Interest (ZI), node capacity, user preference and its location. In order to evaluate the proposed solution, we define a smart event use case. The performance evaluation is conducted by using network simulator and the obtained results show that our approach can give significant gain in terms of network throughput and the transmission delay.

Multimedia Intelligence: When Multimedia Meets Artificial Intelligence

Owing to the rich emerging multimedia applications and services in the past decade, super large amount of multimedia data has been produced for the purpose of advanced research in multimedia. Furthermore, multimedia research has made great progress on image/video content analysis, multimedia search and recommendation, multimedia streaming, multimedia content delivery etc. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undergone a “new” wave of development since being officially regarded as an academic discipline in 1950s, which should give credits to the extreme success of deep learning. Thus, one question naturally arises: What happens when multimedia meets Artificial Intelligence? To answer this question, we introduce the concept of Multimedia Intelligence through investigating the mutual-influence between multimedia and Artificial Intelligence. We explore the mutual influences between multimedia and Artificial Intelligence from two aspects: i) multimedia drives Artificial Intelligence to experience a paradigm shift towards more explainability and ii) Artificial Intelligence in turn injects new ways of thinking for multimedia research. As such, these two aspects form a loop in which multimedia and Artificial Intelligence interactively enhance each other. In this paper, we discuss what and how efforts have been done in literature and share our insights on research directions that deserve further study to produce potentially profound impact on multimedia intelligence.