Multimedia Services

The amount of investments and research that led to the launch of new high definition TV sets and game consoles witness the importance gained by the home entertainment segment of the consumer market. Moreover, many entertainment appliances connect wireless to the Internet, providing users with the freedom of enjoying them at their preferred location at home. As this happens, there has been a widespread interest for the design of Home Entertainment Centers (HECs). HECs play, in fact, a key role as they are the media gateways between the home appliances and the Internet, thus enabling the distribution of various services based on different media streams at home. As most media flows are today based on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and most entertainment services are distributed via wireless, wireless HEC designers face the problem of devising a protocol architecture that avoids the disruption of media flows and, consequently, of multimedia services. We here propose a solution to this problem and support its effectiveness with both analytical and simulation results.

This chapter highlights the importance of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) in the context of smarter cities and roads, a topic that currently attracts significant academic, industrial, and governmental planning, research, and development efforts. In order for VANETs to become reality, a very promising avenue is to bring together multiple wireless technologies in the architectural design. Clustering can be employed in designing such a VANET architecture that successfully uses different technologies. Moreover, as clustering addresses some of VANETs' major challenges, such as scalability and stability, it seems clustering will have an important role in the desired vehicular connectivity in the cities and roads of the future. This chapter presents a comprehensive survey of clustering schemes in the VANET research area, covering aspects that have never been addressed before in a structured manner. The survey presented in this chapter provides a general classification of the clustering algorithms, presents some of the most advanced and latest algorithms in VANETs, and in addition, constitutes the only work in the literature to the best of authors' knowledge that also reviews the performance assessment of clustering algorithms.

The Virtual Home Environment (VHE) is a concept introduced by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for UMTS which enables its users' personal service environment to be portable across network boundaries and between terminals. The VHE ensures that users are consistently presented with the same personalised features, user interface customisation, and services in whatever network and whatever terminal wherever the user may be located. In order for VHE service providers to be able to develop services in a non-restrictive manner, access to ...

The multi-hop wireless networks developed by the FP6 IST ADHOCSYS project provide a cost-effective solution for providing broadband access in mountainous regions. The solution is based on ad hoc networking technologies, created using cheap off-the-shelf hardware equipment, open source software, and an enhanced version of the OLSR routing protocol. This paper describes the implementation, installation and deployment aspects of the project, focusing on current deployment of a pilot network further to the simulation results reported by the authors on .

Heterogeneous multimedia environments make difficult the automatic deployment and interoperability of networked multimedia systems. Diversity of languages, protocols, and hardware platforms lead to major incompatibility issues. Moreover, dynamic multimedia systems instantiation and configuration guided by user and community requirements and preferences are not easy to be performed in this context. This work introduces an ontology framework for automatic networked multimedia systems deployment and configuration. Based on well-known standards, this framework integrates multimedia, distribution and platform concepts. A study case illustrating how networked multimedia systems can be dynamically deployed is presented in order to demonstrate the advantages of using this framework.

New communication service capabilities of mobile devices have boosted the apparition of ubiquitous multimedia scenarios where users could easily create ad hoc multimedia sessions by friendly providing their requirements and preferences. In order to dynamically create and deploy such ubiquitous multimedia systems, end-users require frameworks which allow them in a spontaneous manner to generate the required multimedia sessions. This work introduces an ontology based framework aimed at the configuration and deployment of multimedia services driven by user preferences. A case study is presented in order to illustrate the use of this framework in the context of extended home networks.

Our novel Call Admission Control (CAC) scheme [1], [2] determines the number of Expedited Forwarding (EF ) (Premium) flows accepted, based on e2e available bandwidth measurement. However, it does not control the number of flows that could be accepted at a node or over a link along a selected routing path for an EF flow. Hence we complemented the functionality of CAC with original traffic management algorithms [2], [3] to balance EF traffic along the selected routing path for new EF flows and consequently across Differentiated Services (DiffServ) network. The novelty of these algorithms emerges from the fact that they employ an optimization dimension of EF traffic, namely the partitioning of End-to-End (e2e) delay required for a new flow into per-link or per-DiffServ node along the selected routing path. Furthermore, some network resource policies are incorporated with these algorithms to apportion the e2e resource required for EF traffic flows into per-DiffServ node requirement along the selected routing path. We demonstrate through analysis and simulation that our proposed optimal e2e delay budget management algorithms are superior to Equi-Partitioning (EP ) algorithm for DiffServ in guaranteeing e2e delay bounds required for EF flows. Furthermore, highly loaded DiffServ nodes are assigned low delay budget and the opposite for low loaded DiffServ nodes, which result in increasing DiffServ network resource utilization.

We present a simple and robust client-server architecture for streaming synchronized multimedia presentations to mobile terminals over a low-bandwidth connection. The server is similar to a compiler, and translates high level SMIL descriptions of multimedia presentations into low level content instructions. The client resembles a virtual machine, operating on content instructions that control the multimedia presentation. The compilation process on the server is designed to reduce the buffering on the client, and hence reduce the start-up delay for the user. Since the server takes the larger burden of the total work, the client can be kept simple. Upon request, the server assembles a sequence of content instructions corresponding to a multimedia presentation, under the optimistic assumption of a minimum communication bandwidth, and streams the content instruction sequence to the client without any other feedback mechanism than flow control. If the bandwidth assumption holds, the client renders the presentation as specified; otherwise, it is able to make controlled pauses in the presentation. We also describe a specific news application based on our architecture.

This paper presents a strategy for the support of Personal Communication Services in TINA compliant systems through the use of mobile agents. The paper reflects the vision of the EC/ACTS research project DOLMEN that has developed OSAM, an Open Service Architecture for fixed and Mobile environments. After introducing the principle of retailer federation in a multi-domain environment, the paper analyses how federation can be established to support migration of agents acting on behalf of the user within the network. Moreover, a strategy for mobile agents allocation is presented and its effectiveness is evaluated according to two different performance metrics: the signalling load on the network and the average response time for service requests.

This paper deals with the analysis of user perceived visual quality for mobile multimedia services. H.264/AVC is selected for low resolution video encoding, and a mobile UMTS network is considered for the access to services. First, from subjective tests results, the combined impact of different service-and radio network-level parameters is inferred. As a result, different cross-layer adaptation alternatives are proposed to maximize the perceived quality level under different service conditions. Afterwards, the backhaul segment is considered taking into account possible congestion effects after the aggregation of multi-user media stream. The proposed dynamic adaptation process determines the best combination of media bitrates in order to optimise the overall quality, by making use of information related to network performance both at the radio and backhaul segments.

Scheduling in a Downlink channel based on partial Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT) is carried out through an opportunistic technique. Within a more practical perspective, this paper first presents a transmission strategy where a minimum rate per user is required, which in a wireless fading scenario, can only be guaranteed under a certain system outage constraint. This minimum rate is demanded within a given time interval to satisfy maximum delay restrictions for the user application. Closed form expressions for maximum scheduling delay and maximum jitter are obtained, standing as possible Quality of Service (QoS) indicators for the system behaviour. The derived expressions are then tested via simulations in several transmission scenarios.

Integrated networks of the near future are expected to provide a wide variety of services, which could consume widely differing amounts of resources. We present a framework for pricing services in integrated networks, and study the effect of pricing on user behavior and network performance. We first describe a network model that is simple, yet models details such as the wealth distribution in society, different classes of service, peak and off-peak traffic, elasticity of user's demand, and call blocking due to budgetary constraints. We then perform experiments to study the effect of setup, per packet and peak load prices on the blocking probability of two classes of calls passing through a single node enforcing admission control. Some selected results are that a) increasing prices first increases the net revenue to a provider, then causes a decrease b) peak-load pricing spreads network utilization more evenly, raising revenue while simultaneously reducing call blocking probability. Finally, we introduce a novel metric for comparing pricing schemes, and prove that for the most part, a pricing scheme involving setup prices is better than a pricing scheme without such a component. __________________ C. Parris and D.

This project establishes the process of designing a fiber optic Ftth network that reaches the homes of each end customer, which allows providing voice services, broadband internet, and television, the above using GPON technology, based on the tree architecture through passive elements, where the node or central is connected to other nodes through a common link, which is shared by all the nodes (ONTs) of the network. This network will be designed in two levels, the first level that starts from the OLT to the level one splitter and the second level that begins from the level one splitter to the OTB element that the level two Splitters have. The entire design will be subject to standards that must be met to achieve the percentage of attenuation allowed. At the design level, it has two directions: one from left to right, where the nodes insert traffic, and another from right to left, where the nodes only have two functions: read or read and delete traffic. It is nothing more than the co...

any universities and research sites have years of experience in applying telecommunications to education. More recently, multimedia technology has created several applications to support the educational process. Although within an internal network it's possible to find advanced high-quality tele-education services, the most common communication infrastructure for exterior sites is based on Internet and/or Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) in a point-to-point setup for video conferencing. The Internet provides no quality of service (QoS) guarantee and a low bandwidth. ISDN is expensive, difficult to integrate with local area network (LAN) communication infrastructures, and doesn't provide network multicast. The fact that only the Internet and ISDN are available for service pro-vision inhibits the development and deployment of advanced tele-education environments based on the already available and cost-effective technology. Advanced virtual reality and virtual presence applications already exist, but they require advanced communications infrastructures. Standardization bodies, telecommunications operators, content providers, and the information technology industry are working to create the basis for new applications. Such applications include remote surgery, distance learning, video and audio on demand, videoconferencing to the desktop, videophone, teleshopping, remote process control, or positioning systems. These new applications must control the QoS through bandwidth allocation, priority of flows, security, mobility, and some may require precise timing and synchronous service. Most importantly, however, they require connectivity. Hence, the infrastructure must support the applications with a predictable and user controllable performance. Currently, no global technology provides that to a satisfying degree. Emerging technologies in this area still suffer from lack of sufficient standardization, coverage, capacity, or acceptance. Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) provides a good basis for controlling quality, resources, and billing. On the other hand, ATM lacks standard applications, interoperability, international connectivity, and global deployment. For a seamless communication, the ATM networks so far don't support dynamically established connections. The Internet is independent of the underlying subnetworks, has a high level of connectivity, and an enormous drive in applications' developments. The next generation of the Internet protocol (IPv6) solved the problem of the scarcity of addresses, while at the same time incorporating some improvements to support advanced applications. The Internet has some drawbacks, as it doesn't provide a secure and reliable transmission, and it can't support synchronization and jitter control. Furthermore, it uses a packet store and a forward of full packets that implies those transmission delays will usually be higher than for ATM. Given the pros and cons of ATM and Internet protocol, it's apparent that none of the protocols will solve all the needs. But combining these two families, the requirements of most applications can be met to a satisfying degree. Emerging streaming media applications in the Internet primarily use the user datagram protocol 68

In this paper we present a unified approach for delivering hypermedia/multimedia objects over broadband networks. The described service consists of several multimedia servers and a set of functions that intend to present to the end user interactive information in real-time. The hypermedia documents are structured using a hypermedia markup language that keeps information of the spatiotemporal relationships among document's media components. In order to deal with the variant network behavior, buffering manipulation mechanisms and grading of the transmitted media quality techniques are proposed to smooth presentation and synchronization anomalies. RÉSUMÉ: Dans ce document nous présentons une approche unifiée pour la fourniture d'objets hypermédias/multimédias sur des réseaux à larges bandes. Le service décrit est constitué de plusieurs serveurs multimédias ainsi que d'un ensemble de fonctions qui visent à présenter à l'utilisateur final une information interactive en temps réel. Les documents hypermédias sont structurés en utilisant un language "mark-up" qui garde l'information sur les liens spaciotemporels entre les différents composants des médias du document. Afin de faire façe à la réaction variable du réseau, des mécanismes de protection contre des erreurs de manipulation ainsi que des améliorations des qualités tecniques des médias transmis sont proposés. Ils visent à atténuer les anomalies de présentation et de synchronisation.

The optimal adaptive multi-threshold (OpAMT) call admission control (CAC) scheme for multiple service networks has been developed. Analysis reveals that the threshold should be applied to low priority services instead of traditional high priority services. This investigation shows that the adaptive threshold helps to improve the network performance by 43%.

This works studies the performance of dynamic routing in QoS networks. Basing on the simulation of realistic networks, the paper compares the behaviour of dynamic and static routing strategies when they are applied to transmit the packets of different traffic classes in a Diffserv environment. The study also shows the effects on dynamic routing of employing MPLS.

The internet of things is predicated on tiny, cheap, lower power computers being embedded in devices everywhere. However such tiny devices by definition have very little memory and computing power available to support user interfaces or extended servers, and so the user interface needs to be distributed over the network. This paper describes techniques using standard technologies based on XML for creating remote userinterfaces for the Internet of Things.

Wireless indoor networks employing Radio over Fiber technique combining 60 GHz wireless networks with wired networks is a new solution to provide high definition in-home multimedia applications. About 5 Gbps is available around 60 GHz band. In 60 GHz band each antenna can cover a small space such as a single room in a building. Thus more antennas are needed to cover the whole building. This leads to frequent handoffs. In addition, the overlapping between two adjacent cells is normally small; therefore a handoff should be completely done in a relatively shorter time compared to cellular networks. Since there are many research results and commercial systems for wireless indoor positioning, predicting the direction of the movement of a user is very easy. This paper proposes the direction assisted handoff algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed handoff algorithm can reduce the total number of handoffs while increasing the percentage of successful handoffs.

Virtualization is critical to cloud computing and is possible through hypervisors, which maps the Virtual machines((VMs) to physical resources but poses security concerns as users relinquish physical possession of their computation and data. Good amount of research is initiated for resource provisioning on hypervisors, still many issues need to be addressed for security demanding and real time VMs. First work SRT-CreditScheduler (Secured and Real-time), maximizes the success rate by dynamically prioritizing the urgency and the workload of VMs but ensures highest security for all. Another work, SA-RT-CreditScheduler (Security-aware and Real-time) is a dual objective scheduler, which maximizes the success rate of VMs in best possible security range as specified by the VM owner. Though the algorithms can be used by any hypervisor, for the current work they have been implemented on Xen hypervisor. Their effectiveness is validated by comparing it with Xen's, Credit and SEDF scheduler, for security demanding tasks with stringent deadline constraints.

Computational grids allow the sharing of geographically distributed computational resources in an efficient, reliable, and secure manner. Grid is still in its infancy, and there are many problems associated with the computational grid, namely job scheduling, resource management, information service, information security, routing, fault tolerance, and many more. Scheduling of jobs on grid nodes is an NP-class problem warranting for heuristic and meta-heuristic solution approach. In the proposed work, a meta-heuristic technique, auto controlled ant colony optimization, has been applied to solve this problem. The work observes the effect of interprocess communication in process to optimize turnaround time of the job. The proposed model has been simulated in Matlab. For the different scenarios in computational grid, results have been analyzed. Result of the proposed model is compared with another meta-heuristic technique genetic algorithm that has been applied for the same purpose. It is found that auto controlled ant colony optimization not only gives better solution in comparison to genetic algorithm, but also converges faster because initial solution itself is good because of constructive and decision-based policy adapted by the former. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2012.

SUMMARYComputational grids allow the sharing of geographically distributed computational resources in an efficient, reliable, and secure manner. Grid is still in its infancy, and there are many problems associated with the computational grid, namely job scheduling, resource management, information service, information security, routing, fault tolerance, and many more. Scheduling of jobs on grid nodes is an NP‐class problem warranting for heuristic and meta‐heuristic solution approach. In the proposed work, a meta‐heuristic technique, auto controlled ant colony optimization, has been applied to solve this problem. The work observes the effect of interprocess communication in process to optimize turnaround time of the job. The proposed model has been simulated in Matlab. For the different scenarios in computational grid, results have been analyzed. Result of the proposed model is compared with another meta‐heuristic technique genetic algorithm that has been applied for the same purpos...

In cellular mobile communication system the existing dynamic channel allocation scheme suffer from high blocking probability and forced termination probability. To mitigate this problem, in this paper we evaluated the performance of dynamic channel allocation scheme based on carrier-to-noise interference ratio. In our system model, uplink power strength from a call-initiating user to the base station is examined. This power is provided by the carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N). The channel search is conducted in the repeated channel numbers of that cell based on the carrier-to-noise ratio so that this system provides the low blocking probability and initiates large number of calls in dynamic channel allocation environment. We have presented the momentous performance in blocking probability and forced termination probability through this research.

and W(yl) is the attenuation factor on the inclined front face, which for an assumed infinite face is taken again to be 4 for any angle of a including zero. Over the path CD we define g(r) = R,, + Rozd and evaluate the integral using the stationary phase technique, to give for a turning value at ro = 0 cos a -+ = o dr Ro, RO' At this point 3 1 = d , + i n 2 a dr' ,=,o d,d, Consequently using the Taylor series for g(r) gives dr' g(r) =sin' a U l d 2 (9) Substituting eqns. 6 and 7 into eqn. 2 then gives the attenuation factor 112 W(B) = W,,(B) -f ; ) The variable of integration y, is now changed to r using eqn. 7. The exponential factor is replaced by its equivalent Taylor series, centred on the stationary phase point ro. The term @,(dy,)]1'2 is approximated by [d,d,]'/', and since W,,(B) = 2 for a perfect conductor, this enables the total attenuation to be written as W(B) = 2 -4 ( & ) " ' hisin m x j (sin"+-sin d' " cos " > 0 x e v ( -j i = II 2d sin' a

Résumé/Abstract Mobile Network Operators have invested massively into the roll-out of their UMTS or 3rd Generation Mobile Networks. Now they are changing their focus from infrastructure roll-out to the deployment of new attractive data and multimedia services in ...

As multimedia applications proliferate, there is a desire to provide wireless transport to information streams with inherently different data rates. Direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) is a natural multiple-access strategy for multiple data-rate systems. Recent work on multirate DS-CDMA receivers has focused on signal-processing techniques, which detect all users of all rates simultaneously. In the current work, multirate users have multiple bandwidths. Thus, it is proposed to exploit bandwidth differences to achieve frequencybased rate separation followed by single-rate detection schemes. Such a methodology enables a tradeoff between receiver complexity and performance. The performance of the proposed filters and receivers are derived for both a modified matched filter and modified decorrelator employing rate separation. Performance of a multirate CDMA overlay system is evaluated. In addition, chip pulse shaping for wide-band users is developed to improve performance for narrow-band users for the overlay system.

In this paper, we propose several power allocation schemes for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission based on the minimization of an approximated bit error rate (BER) expression, and we evaluate the different solutions via field trial experimentations. The methods illustrated in this paper, serve to allocate power among the different transmit antennas and the different subcarriers which compose the MIMO OFDM transmitted signal. Several solutions are available to perform power allocation. Frequency domain power allocation, spatial domain power allocation and combined spatial and frequency power allocation are evaluated. We first review and describe the analytical solution for each power allocation scheme and then evaluate the complexity in terms of both computational operations and BER performances. Simulation results show the performance in term of BER and link the advantage of each possibility of power distribution with the associated complexity.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a popular method for high data rate wireless transmission. Combining OFDM with antenna arrays at the transmitter and receiver enhances the capacity gain. This paper proposes a novel transmit power allocation for Coded Multi-Input Multi-Output Multi-Carrier Modulation (MIMO-MCM). This technique consists of adapting the power allocation in the spatial domain (i.e. through the different transmit antennas) in term of the channel conditions by the optimization process based on the optimality of the global Bit Error Rate (BER). Simulation results show significant gains for several antenna configurations.

The growing demand of multimedia services and the growth of broadband Internet related contents lead to increasing interest to high speed communications. This is because the higher bit rate and higher quality applications must be provided via the Internet such as huge data downloading, high quality streaming videos. On the other hand, the requirement for wide bandwidth and flexibility imposes the use of efficient transmission methods that would fit well to the characteristics of wideband channels especially in wireless environment where the channel is very hostile. Combining Multi-Input Multi-output (MIMO) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) with Guard Interval (GI) is a highly promising method to achieving required data rate for real time application. However, in a frequency selective fading environment, equally sharing the power transmission in the space domain does not optimize the global transmission. In this publication, we propose to adapt the power allocation in the space domain (i.e. through the different transmit antennas) in function of the channel variations and optimization process based on the optimality of the global Bit Error Rate (BER). Simulation results show significant gains for several antenna configurations.

The next generation communication system will provide high quality multimedia service in a more flexible and intelligent manner. In this paper, we propose a new SIP over MPLS network architecture to achieve this goal. To integrate SIP protocol with the traffic engineering (TE) function of MPLS network seamlessly and facilitate SIP call setup, the SIP-MPLS traffic aggregation server (TA server) is highlighted in this new architecture. Furthermore, the call admission and bandwidth renegotiation algorithms running on the TA server are investigated carefully. We rely on OPNET simulation to assess the performance of our network architecture and the capability of different call admission and bandwidth re-negotiation algorithms. The simulation results show that the algorithm of TBCA-BP is a suitable candidate for accomplishing the call admission and bandwidth renegotiation task due to its satisfying performance, and our network architecture is able to shorten the SIP call setup delay greatly by using the TA server.

A system supporting video on demand is modeled in the process calculus CCS (Calculus of Communicating Systems), while some properties are expressed in a temporal logic and verified by means of the model checkers of the North Carolina Concurrency Workbench. This application was chosen as a case study to evaluate the usefulness of a methodology, by means of which a property is checked on reduced models obtained issuing abstractions of the system on the basis of the formula. Experimental results are shown and discussed.

The metrics play increasingly fundamental role in the design, development, deployment and operation of telecommunication systems. Despite their importance, the studies of metrics are usually limited to a narrow area or a well-defined objective. Our study aims to more broadly survey the metrics that are commonly used for analyzing, developing and managing telecommunication networks in order to facilitate understanding of the current metrics landscape. The metrics are simple abstractions of systems, and they directly influence how the systems are perceived by different stakeholders. However, defining and using metrics for telecommunication systems with ever increasing complexity is a complicated matter which has not been so far systematically and comprehensively considered in the literature. The common metrics sources are identified, and how the metrics are used and selected is discussed. The most commonly used metrics for telecommunication systems are categorized and presented as energy and power metrics, quality-of-service metrics, quality-of-experience metrics, security metrics, and reliability and resilience metrics. Finally, the research directions and recommendations how the metrics can evolve, and be defined and used more effectively are outlined.

With data throughput for mobile devices constantly increasing, services such as video broadcast and multicast are becoming feasible. The 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) committee is currently working on a standard for Mobile Broadcast and Multicast services (MBMS ). MBMS is expected to enable easier deployment of video and multimedia services on 3G networks. W e present an overview of the standard including the proposed architecture and requirements focusing on radio aspects. We discuss the issue of video error resilience in such services that is critical to maintain consistent quality for terminals. The error resilience techniques currently used in video streaming services are not suitable for MBMS services. W e analyze the error resilience techniques that are applicable within the context of MBMS standard and present our early research in this area.

Protection of data against long fading time is one of the greatest challenges posed by a satellite delivery system offering multimedia services to mobile devices like DVB-SH. To deal with this challenge several enhancements and modifications of the existing terrestrial mobile TV (DVB-H) physical and link layers are being considered. These solutions provide the required protection depth but they don't take into account the specificity of mobile handheld devices such as power consumption, memory constraints and chipsets implementation costs. In this report, we propose an innovative algorithm (called Multi Burst Sliding Encoding or MBSE) that extends the DVB-H intra-burst (MPE-FEC) protection to an inter-burst protection so that complete burst losses could be recovered while taking into account the specificity of mobile handheld devices. Based on a clever organisation of the data, our algorithm allows to provide protection against long term fading while still using RS code implemented in DVB-H chipsets. We evaluate the performance of MBSE by both theoretical analysis as well as intensive simulations and experiments. The results also show good performance in terms of protection, battery and memory saving. The MBSE is now under standardisation and it is considered by the DVB Forum as the main solution for the DVB-SH class terminals.

Replacing the IPv4 protocol with IPv6 on the Internet is currently one of the aims of the European Union policy. The main reason for this replacement is the effeteness of the addresses pool in the IPv4 protocol, which can cause serious complications in the evolution of the Internet and its adaptation in new areas, e.g., in next generation mobile telephony or the so called Internet of Things. Simultaneously, the addressing capabilities of the IPv6 protocol are practically unlimited and its new functionalities increase the attractiveness of its usage. The article discusses the problems connected with the IPv6 deployment on the Internet. Especially, the rules for realization of the IPv6 deployment and rules for cooperation of IPv4 with IPv6 (including cooperation tests) in network infrastructure and in applications are presented. Moreover, the European projects' results and the activity's directions of the national project Future Internet Engineering are discussed.

To support real-time multimedia services in UMTS all-IP network, Third-Generation Partnership Project TR 25.936 proposed two approaches to support real-time serving radio network controller (SRNC) switching, which require packet duplication during SRNC relocation. These approaches significantly consume extra system resources. This paper proposes the fast SRNC relocation (FSR) approach that does not duplicate packets. In FSR, a packet buffering mechanism is implemented to avoid packet loss at the target RNC. We propose an analytic model to investigate the performance of FSR. The numerical results show that packet loss at the source RNC can be ignored. Furthermore, the expected number of packets buffered at the target RNC is small, which does not prolong packet delay.

To support real-time multimedia services in UMTS all-IP network, Third-Generation Partnership Project TR 25.936 proposed two approaches to support real-time serving radio network controller (SRNC) switching, which require packet duplication during SRNC relocation. These approaches significantly consume extra system resources. This paper proposes the fast SRNC relocation (FSR) approach that does not duplicate packets. In FSR, a packet buffering mechanism is implemented to avoid packet loss at the target RNC. We propose an analytic model to investigate the performance of FSR. The numerical results show that packet loss at the source RNC can be ignored. Furthermore, the expected number of packets buffered at the target RNC is small, which does not prolong packet delay.

The IP Multimedia Core Network Subsystem (IMS) provides real-time multimedia services for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). Through Recharge Threshold-based Credit Reservation (RTCR) mechanism, prepaid IMS services can be supported by the Online Charging System (OCS) in UMTS. In RTCR, when the remaining amount of prepaid credit is below a threshold, the OCS reminds the user to recharge the prepaid account. It is essential to choose an appropriate recharge threshold to reduce the probability that the in-progress service sessions are forced-terminated. An analytic model is developed to investigate the performance of RTCR for the OCS. Based on our study, the network operator can select the appropriate parameter values for various traffic conditions.

Multimedia services over resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) face a performance bottleneck issue from the gateway node to the sink node. Therefore, the queue management at the gateway node is crucial for diversified messages conveyed from the front nodes to the sink node. In this study, we focus on the performance improvement upon different traffic loads over WSNs. A dynamic adaptation scheme based on adjusting Beacon Interval (BI) and Superframe Duration (SD) in the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC superframe accompanied with RED (Random Early Detection) queue management scheme is proposed to increase the transmission efficiency of multimedia over WSNs. Evaluation metrics include end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and energy consumption in IEEE 802.15.4 beacon enabled and non-beacon enabled mode. Simulation results show that RED scheme accompanied with an appropriate setting of BO, SO value can effectively decrease end-to-end delay and energy consumption compared to the DropTail (FIFO) scheme.

Multimedia services over resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) face a performance bottleneck issue from the gateway node to the sink node. Therefore, the queue management at the gateway node is crucial for diversified messages conveyed from the front nodes to the sink node. In this study, we focus on the performance improvement upon different traffic loads over WSNs. A dynamic adaptation scheme based on adjusting Beacon Interval (BI) and Superframe Duration (SD) in the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC superframe accompanied with RED (Random Early Detection) queue management scheme is proposed to increase the transmission efficiency of multimedia over WSNs. Evaluation metrics include end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and energy consumption in IEEE 802.15.4 beacon enabled and non-beacon enabled mode. Simulation results show that RED scheme accompanied with an appropriate setting of BO, SO value can effectively decrease end-to-end delay and energy consumption compared to the Drop...

Community clouds are formed when a cloud infrastructure is created to support the needs of multiple, independent service consumers that have shared concerns. Such infrastructures may allow member organizations to share resources on an opportunistic basis, i.e., one entity may provide services to the other members during off-peak times, and may in turn consume services from other members. Thus each member provides permanent or transient services according to their competencies and excess. This paper sets forth a conceptual architecture, examines the opportunities offered by such systems, and initiates a conversation on the business implications. Community-commerce brokering expands the choices for business from "where can I buy/use a service" to "whom do I want to sell my excess services to".

There are several initiatives working in the definition and implementation of distributed architectures that enable the development of distributed multimedia applications on top of them, while offering Digital Rights Management (DRM) features. In the paper, the main features of MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM) [1], the Advanced IPTV terminal (AIT) [2] and DMAG [3] Multimedia Information Protection and Management System (MIPAMS) [4] are presented, while highlighting the common ground and differences between MIPAMS and the standards. A set of usage scenarios is proposed to show how MIPAMS enables the development of applications on top of it, which deal with the needs of content creators, distributors and consumers according to different business models.

In this paper we address the important problem of Multicasting using a reconfigurable network topology called the Multi-Ring network. The Multi-Ring network is shown to have a rich set of nice properties that support applications in medical imaging, scientific computing, and artificial intelligence. The most important property of the Multi-Ring topology is "scalability". It is feasible and cost-effective to interconnect hundreds of thousands of computing notes using the Multi-Ring network topology. Efficient Multicasting operation on a platform composed of thousands of computing nodes is a challenge that is being addressed in this paper.

The improvement of Quality of Service (QoS) in mobile wireless LANs is a challenging task as it has a different characteristic. This paper aims to present an explanation about protocols used on the multiple mobile wireless LANs, making a comparison between the results of previous experiments and propose a new protocol to improve results in QoS Characteristics on Multiple Mobile Wireless LANs (m-WLAN).

The 3GPP has specified the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) for the provisioning of multimedia services in UMTS Release 5 and later. Interconnection at the service layer between 3GPP and LAN networks requires interworking between IMS and WLAN functionalities. Studying several interconnection scenarios and the main functionalities of IMS, this article analyzes how the interconnection of 3GPP and WLAN networks may be performed in order to support different levels of service interconnection. Special attention is paid to interconnection at the session negotiation level, using SIP (the base protocol of the IMS) to provide session negotiation with QoS and AAAC support. The authors analyze how the interconnection of 3GPP and WLAN networks may be performed in order to support different levels of service interconnection.

This paper of Computer Simulation and Field Experiment for Downlink Multiuser MIMO in Mobile WiMAX System overviewed the Current issues regarding the WiMAX System of today. The transmission performance for a downlink mobile WiMAX system with multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems in a computer simulation and field experiment is described. We Can Say that In computer simulation, a MU-MIMO transmission system can be realized by using the block diagonalization (BD) algorithm, and each user can receive signals without any signal interference from other users. The Paper is explaining the major contents regarding the the bit error rate (BER) performance and channel capacity in accordance with modulation schemes and the number of streams were simulated in a spatially correlated multipath fading environment. Furthermore, paper propose a method for evaluating the transmission performance for this downlink mobile WiMAX system in this environment by using the computer simul...

The proposed platform aims to develop an intelligent cross-media platform for personalised leisure and entertainment in thematic parks or venues. The system we develop allows the visitor to be the real protagonist in the venue. The platform caters for a great variety of media needs of the visitors: from recording their visit to provide a high-quality, customised souvenir, to embedding personalised electronic content into their activities in real time. The platform incorporates new and innovative solutions that cover and improve digital content acquisition and creation, management and processing. access, retrieval, manipulation and delivery of digital content. The platform is equipped with innovative imaging technologies for real time detection, localisation and tracking of "human content", i.e., the human visitor within the recoding being made in real-time by the system. No constraints are imposed on the variation of the environment.

This paper describes the QoS architecture and the corresponding QoS signalling protocols to be developed inside the IST project Daidalos. We address the main results achieved in terms of the definition of the QoS components and its interfaces, the description of the application and network services, definition of the signalling scenarios for the integration of the QoS signalling with the application signalling and with mobility approaches, and specification of the intra-and interdomain QoS control approaches. We also describe the QoS management of the system, through the Policy-based Management System, and a Real-time Network Monitoring system able to aid in admission control with the results of active and passive measurements. All the elements, interfaces and functionalities take into account multicast services and inherent broadcast networks.