Real-time Multimedia Streaming Research Articles

Improving QoS in mobile multimedia streaming with SCTP-PQ

The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is often the preferred transport layer protocol in streaming applications. This protocol combines the best aspects of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP), but also offers additional features. SCTP supports multihoming and multi-streaming applications and has a congestion mechanism like TCP. Media streaming consists of different types of frames with different levels of importance. For example, I-frames carry more information than B-frames in Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). Usually, MPEG frames are processed using the First-In-First-Out (FIFO) algorithm. In this paper, a four-level priority queue integrated protocol named SCTP Priority Queue (SCTP-PQ) has been developed to reduce jitter and delay in real-time multimedia streaming for mobile devices. As part of the development, priority and retransmitted packets are determined on the sending side and these packets are processed faster by using the priority queue on the receiving side. In this way, the average queue delay of priority packets on the receiving side is reduced by 90 % and the throughput values are increased by an average of 10 times. The developed protocol has been extensively tested and compared with SCTP. The results show that the SCTP-PQ outperforms the standard SCTP in terms of jitter and delay.

Smart Traffic Shaping Based on Distributed Reinforcement Learning for Multimedia Streaming over 5G-VANET Communication Technology

Vehicles serve as mobile nodes in a high-mobility MANET technique known as the vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), which is used in urban and rural areas as well as on highways. The VANET, based on 5G (5G-VANET), provides advanced facilities to the driving of vehicles such as reliable communication, less end-to-end latency, a higher data rate transmission, reasonable cost, and assured quality of experience (QoE) for delivered services. However, the crucial challenge with these recent technologies is to design a real-time multimedia traffic shaping that maintains smooth connectivity under the unpredictable change of channel capacity and data rate due to handover for rapid vehicle mobility among roadside units. This research proposes a smart real-time multimedia traffic shaping to control the amount and the rate of the traffic sent to the 5G-VANET based on distributed reinforcement learning (RMDRL). The proposed mechanism selects the accurate decisions of coding parameters such as quantization parameters, group of pictures, and frame rate that are used to manipulate the required traffic shaping of the multimedia stream on the 5G-VANET. Furthermore, the impact of the aforementioned three coding parameters has been comprehensively studied using five video clips to achieve the optimal traffic rate value for real-time multimedia streaming on 5G communication. The proposed algorithm outperforms the baseline traffic shaping in terms of peak-signal-to-noise-ratio (PSNR) and end-to-end frame delay. This research will open new comfortable facilities for vehicle manufacturing to enhance the data communication system on the 5G-VANET.

A Secure Real-time Multimedia Streaming through Robust and Lightweight AES Encryption in UAV Networks for Operational Scenarios in Military Domain

This article proposes a framework of application-level security, an HW-SW implementation of a low-cost solution for real-time multimodal data encryption and decryption for security applications in protected environments like espionage, situational awareness, monitoring, and counter-UAV. Data is captured from drones equipped with microphone arrays and cameras. This is performed by exploiting acoustic event analysis, video tracking, and recognition, performed on a ground station. All the communications are delivered in a secure data channel. Integrity and secrecy of the sensitive data acquired by drones must be guaranteed until the data is delivered in real-time from UAVs to the destination node. A possible data exploit may cause critical problems if the data is intercepted by malicious attackers. Being the drones equipped with low energy consuming devices with low computational power, like single-board-computers, a real-time lightweight application-level AES encryption, in addition to the MAC encryption of the wireless communication channel, has been considered. In the experiment, the encryption and decryption process has been optimized, even under adverse transmission conditions ensuring continuous data encryption even if some packets are lost or the connection is repeatedly dropped and reestablished.

Real-time Multimedia Transmission in open group Environment of MANETsusing SLIM+ Protocol: A Performance Evaluation

Although the mobility of nodes or computing devices may cause problem of link failure, a careful strategy used for routing protocols resolve one of the major issue associated with MANETs. The multicast routing protocols adopt either a tree-based configuration structure or a mesh-based configuration structure to maintain their state in stressed conditions posed to them in various scenarios. The research paper focuses on evaluating the performance of routing scheme used by SLIM+ for real-time multimedia streaming multicast in open group environment of MANET. Performance metric used is Throughput and Normalized Routing Load; comparing SLIM+ with its competitive and most commonly used MAODV and PUMA routing protocols for multicasting. It then observed that performance of SLIM+ is promising.

Autonomous framework simulation tools for real-time multimedia streaming over wireless ad-hoc networks

Real-time video communication has become one of the most significant applications extensively used by homogeneous/heterogeneous wireless network technologies, such as Wi-Fi, the Internet of things, the wireless sensor network (WSN), 5G, etc. This leads to enhanced deployment of multimedia streaming applications over wireless network technologies. In order to accomplish the optimal performance of real-time multimedia streaming applications over the homogeneous/heterogeneous wireless network, it is therefore necessary to develop a simulation tool-set that effectively measures the quality of service (QoS) for different multimedia streaming applications over transport layer protocols. This paper proposes an autonomous simulation tool (AST) that is entirely independent from the source code of transport layer protocols. Furthermore, the AST is integrated into NS-2 to evaluate the QoS of real-time video streaming over numerous transport layer protocols and it uses new QoS measurement tools to test the video delivery quality based on I-frames to speeds up the assessment of multimedia streaming quality and ensure high accuracy of performance metrics. The simulation results show that using the AST to simulate real-time multimedia stream results in between 13% and 36% higher delivery ratio and 150–250% less cumulative jitter delay compared with using baseline simulation tools. Also, the AST guarantees an optimal QoS performance measurements in terms of the peak signal-to-noise Ratio and visual quality of the received video.

Machine Learning for Wireless Connectivity and Security of Cellular-Connected UAVs

Cellular-connected UAVs will inevitably be integrated into future cellular networks as new aerial mobile users. Providing cellular connectivity to UAVs will enable a myriad of applications ranging from online video streaming to medical delivery. However, to enable reliable wireless connectivity for the UAVs as well as secure operation, various challenges need to be addressed such as interference management, mobility management and handover, cyber-physical attacks, and authentication. In this article, the goal is to expose the wireless and security challenges that arise in the context of UAV-based delivery systems, UAV-based real-time multimedia streaming, and UAV-enabled intelligent transportation systems. To address such challenges, ANN-based solution schemes are introduced. The introduced approaches enable UAVs to adaptively exploit wireless system resources while guaranteeing secure operation in real time. Preliminary simulation results show the benefits of the introduced solutions for each of the aforementioned cellular-connected UAV application use cases.

A real-time multimedia streaming transmission control mechanism based on edge cloud computing and opportunistic approximation optimization

We address the problem of real-time transmission of multimedia streams in distributed heterogeneous networks. The effect of this problem directly affects the execution efficiency, real-time and rel...

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.

Distributed Optimal Relay Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks

<p>In wireless distributed sensor networks, one open problem is how to guarantee the reliable relay selection based on the quality of services diversity. To address this problem, we focus on the reliable adaptive relay selection approach and adaptive QoS supported algorithm, based on which we present a Markov chain model, in consideration of different packet states and error control algorithm assignment. The mathematical analyses and MATLAB simulation results show that the proposed relay selection approach could perform better in terms of saturation throughput, reliability, and energy efficiency, compared with the traditional approaches. More importantly, the quality of real-time multimedia streaming is improved significantly, in terms of decodable frame ratio and delay.</p>

An adaptive cross-layer error control protocol for wireless multimedia sensor networks

In this paper, we introduce a new adaptive cross-layer error control protocol (NAC) for reliable and efficient real-time multimedia streaming in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). The proposed protocol uses an adaptive Forward Error Correction (FEC) algorithm in the application layer, a dynamic hybrid FEC/ARQ method, and an Unequal Error Protection (UEP) mechanism in the wireless link layer. Moreover, it dynamically tunes the amount of erasure codes per group of packets based on mean absolute deviation of recently measured average round-trip times, and cross-layer information such as arrival of acknowledgment packets, network traffic load, and wireless channel state. In fact, by dynamically determining suitable redundancy for the source packet based on the packet loss rate in the hybrid FEC/ARQ error control algorithm in the wireless link layer, we achieve significant improvements over the existing error control schemes, while decreasing the number of retransmissions in ARQ mechanism. Our comprehensive simulations show that the proposed NAC protocol achieves better performance compared to the popular error control schemes in terms of energy efficiency, frame loss rate, frame Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), and delay-constrained PSNR for real-time multimedia streaming over sensor networks.

A Low-Complexity Delay-Tunable Coding Scheme for Visible Light Communication Systems

Visible light communication (VLC) systems are expected to support a variety of applications, such as common-information broadcasting, real-time multimedia streaming, and large file downloading. Typically, these applications have different delay requirements. Hence, it is desirable to design high-performance coding scheme capable of supporting a wide range of delays but with acceptable hardware complexity. To achieve this, we propose a delay-tunable coding scheme for VLC systems based on block Markov superposition transmission of short non-binary low-density parity-check (NBLDPC) codes. The proposed coding scheme includes the following advantages: 1) it is easily configurable to fulfill different delay requirements while keeping the code rate constant; 2) it requires essentially the same hardware modules to implement the encoder/decoder as the involved short NBLDPC code; and 3) it can have a larger coding gain if a longer delay is tolerated. Numerical results are presented to show the expected tradeoff between delay and energy in a VLC system.

Investigating the Performance of Pull-Based Dynamic Adaptive Streaming in NDN

Adaptive content delivery is the state of the art in real-time multimedia streaming. Leading streaming approaches, e.g., MPEG-DASH and Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), have been developed for classical IP-based networks, providing effective streaming by means of pure client-based control and adaptation. However, the research activities of the Future Internet community adopt a new course that is different from today’s host-based communication model. So-called information-centric networks are of considerable interest and are advertised as enablers for intelligent networks, where effective content delivery is to be provided as an inherent network feature. This paper investigates the performance gap between pure client-driven adaptation and the theoretical optimum in the promising Future Internet architecture named data networking (NDN). The theoretical optimum is derived by modeling multimedia streaming in NDN as a fractional multi-commodity flow problem and by extending it taking caching into account. We investigate the multimedia streaming performance under different forwarding strategies, exposing the interplay of forwarding strategies and adaptation mechanisms. Furthermore, we examine the influence of network inherent caching on the streaming performance by varying the caching polices and the cache sizes.

Modeling of real-time multimedia streaming with deterministic access

To provide Quality of service (QoS) in wireless networks, deterministic channel access is often used. The key idea of the method is to provide a prerogative to a station to access the channel during allocated time intervals called reservations. The existed protocol standards define how to set up a reservation but do not describe how many reservations should be allocated to meet QoS requirements. This challenging issue is complicated in case of a real-time multimedia stream of variable bitrate. To address this issue, in the paper, we propose an algorithm of dynamic resource allocation for the stream in the presence of noise.

THROUGHPUT AND BIT ERROR RATE ANALYSIS OF LUBY TRANSFORM CODES WITH LOW AND MEDIUM NODAL DEGREE DISTRIBUTIONS

This study presents two degree distributions namely low and medium nodal degree distributions aiming to build a low overhead Luby Transform (LT) codes. The motivation is to design a fast encoder/decoder especially for real-time multimedia streaming and multicasting applications using LT codes. The key idea of this study is to restrict the average degree of the transmitted encoded symbols as minimal. The impacts of low and medium degree encoded symbols on the performance of LT codes over an Additive White Gaussian Noise channel (AWGN) have been analyzed by the means of Bit Error Rate (BER), encoder/decoder delay, ripple size, throughput, overhead and bandwidth utilization as the performance metrics. Simulation results show that the proposed nodal degree distributions for LT codes achieve better throughput and BER performance at low overhead and delay with minimal decoding iterations by having a constantly decreasing ripple in comparison with conventional Robust Soliton Distribution (RSD) based LT codes.

One-time packet key exchange scheme for secure real-time multimedia applications

To secure multimedia communications, existing encryption techniques usually encrypt the whole data stream using the same session key during a session. The use of the session key confronts with tradeoff problem between session key creation latency and security for the real-time multimedia stream. The main feature of our proposed scheme is to selectively encrypt RTP packets using different one-time packet keys in the same session for real-time multimedia applications. The packet key, which has already been used, will never be reused throughout the same session. The use of the one-time packet key enables to improve security strength of real-time multimedia. To solve the issue of the real-time packet key exchanges related to the timely use of the one-time packet keys, this paper suggests the one-time packet key exchange method that does not need to occur on a packet-by-packet basis.

A QoS Provisioning Mechanism of Real-Time Wireless USB Transfers for Smart HDTV Multimedia Services

Wireless universal serial bus (WUSB) is the USB technology merged with WiMedia PHY/MAC. WUSB can be applied to wireless personal area network applications as well as PAN applications like wired USB. However the current WUSB protocol can't provide resource allocation scheme to respond to changes of available resource as well as resource allocation scheme for saturated wireless channel. This problem causes the critical problems in QoS provisioning to real-time multimedia streams such as high definition television, since multimedia application generate high data rates and can easily saturate the bandwidth even at the rates provided by Ultra wide-band transmissions. Therefore, we propose resource allocation scheme for WUSB transfers to respond to changes of available resource as well as resource allocation scheme for saturated WUSB channel. And its performance is evaluated under an internet protocol television service scenario in wireless home networks.

The application of neural networks to improve the quality of experience of video transmission over IP networks

The transmission of real-time multimedia streams requires service guarantees, such as limited packet loss, minimum bandwidth and low delay and jitter, to ensure a good quality of experience (QoE) for viewers. The spatial and temporal redundancy of videos is addressed by coding algorithms that reduce the amount of information necessary to represent the images. As a consequence, multimedia traffic commonly presents variable bit rate behavior and self-similar characteristics. Although the reduction in bandwidth requirements is highly desirable, the burstiness of traffic leads to problems in network design and performance prediction. Even a low level of packet loss could severely affect the viewer QoE. In this paper, we propose a real-time packet payload classifier, implemented with artificial neural network (ANN) to be used at network routers. A priority packet discard strategy can be implemented to avoid discarding packets that carry the most relevant information for image reconstruction, thus improving the perceived quality. This approach does not require changes at the video source to classify outgoing packets. The ANN was employed because of its good capacity in temporal series recognition and the possibility of its implementation in real-time systems due to its low computational complexity. The video traces used for training and validation were encoded with H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding and are publicly available. The priority packet discard strategy was tested through computational simulations. The QoE was estimated comparing the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of original and the received frames of video, and the results indicate that the proposed method improves the QoE. The implementation does not require packet payload processing and can be performed with network layer information only.

A dynamic channel reservation method for multimedia streaming in Wi-Fi Mesh networks

To improve data transmission robustness in the Wi-Fi Mesh standard, a deterministic channel access method was added to the basic random access method, which enabled the stations to get a contention-free access in the previously reserved time intervals. This mechanism can be conveniently used for transmission of the real-time multimedia streams which require quality-of-service support. However, the packet transmission in the reserved time intervals is affected by random noise and interference, and the time-consuming reservation procedure does not allow one to change on-the-fly the amount of reserved channel resources. A method for dynamic channel reservation which takes into account these aspects of the deterministic channel access mechanism and meets the quality-of-service requirements was proposed.

High Reliable Relay Selection Approach for QoS Provisioning in Wireless Distributed Sensor Networks

In wireless distributed sensor networks, one open problem is how to guarantee the reliable relay selection based on the quality of services diversity. To address this problem, we focus on the reliable adaptive relay selection approach and adaptive QoS supported algorithm, based on which we present a Markov chain model, in consideration of different packet states and error control algorithm assignment. The mathematical analyses and NS-2 simulation results show that the proposed relay selection approach could perform better in terms of saturation throughput, reliability, and energy efficiency, compared with the traditional approaches. More importantly, the quality of real-time multimedia streaming is improved significantly, in terms of decodable frame ratio and delay.

A Multichannel Cross-Layer Architecture for Multimedia Sensor Networks

Depending upon the technological developments, the same fast evolution has occurred in the structures of sensor networks, their composing devices which are sensor nodes, and their application areas. Those tiny, energy-constrained, mostly non-real-time data transmitting sensor nodes have evolved to more energy-containing, camera-adapted, real-time multimedia-data-transmitting devices. Developments in the usage areas and the capabilities have revealed some other problems such as time limited data transmission. In this paper, we propose a multichannel cross-layer architecture for Quality of Service (QoS) constrained multimedia sensor networks. The proposed architecture considers both the time and energy efficiency concepts. Energy efficiency is succeeded by ensuring the fair load distribution among the nodes during a real-time multimedia packet stream transmission. Besides ensuring the fair load distribution, on-time packet transmission is also assured by constructing the paths with a hard reservation technique depending on the predetermined QoS constraints. Simulations show that the proposed architecture provides higher performance than the Greedy approach and the LEERA scheme.