Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Adaptive mobile services'

This thesis presents a new strategy in achieving highly reliable and accurate position solutions fulfilling the requirements of Location-Based Services (LBS) pedestrians’ applications. The new strategy is divided into two main parts. The first part integrates the available positioning technology within the surrounding LBS application context by introducing an adaptive LBS framework. The context can be described as a group of factors affecting the application behaviour; this includes environmental states, available resources and user preferences. The proposed adaptive framework consists of several stages, such as defining the contextual factors that have a direct effect on the positioning performance, identifying preliminary positioning performance requirements associated with different LBS application groups, and introducing an intelligent positioning services selection function. The second part of this work involves the design and development of a novel positioning model that is responsible for delivering highly reliable, accurate and precise position solutions to LBS users. This new model is based on the single frequency GPS Standard Positioning Service (SPS). Additionally, it is incorporated within the adaptive LBS framework while providing the position solutions, in which all identified contextual factors and application requirements are accounted. The positioning model operates over a client-server architecture including two main components, described as the Localisation Server (LS) and the Mobile Unit (MU). Hybrid functional approaches were developed at both components consisting of several processing procedures allowing the positioning model to operate in two position determination modes. Stand-alone mode is used if enough navigation information was available at the MU using its local positioning device (GPS/EGNOS receiver). Otherwise, server-based mode is utilised, in which the LS intervenes and starts providing the required position solutions. At the LS, multiple sources of GPS augmentation services were received using the Internet as the sole augmentation data transportation medium. The augmentation data was then processed and integrated for the purpose of guaranteeing the availability of valid and reliable information required for the provision of accurate and precise position solutions. Two main advanced position computation methods were developed at the LS, described as coordinate domain and raw domain. The positioning model was experimentally evaluated. According to the reported results, the LS through the developed position computation methods, was able to provide position samples with an accuracy of less than 2 meters, with high precision at 95% confidence level; this was achieved in urban, rural, and open space (clear satellite view) navigation environments. Additionally, the integrity of the position solutions was guaranteed in such environments during more than 90% of the navigation time, taking into consideration the identified integrity thresholds (Horizontal Alert Limits (HAL)=11 m). This positioning performance has outperformed the existing GPS/EGNOS service which was implemented at the MU in all scenarios and environments. In addition, utilising a simulation evaluation facility the developed positioning model performance was quantified with reference to a hybrid positioning service that will be offered by future Galileo Open Service (OS) along with GPS/EGNOS. Using the statistical t-test, it was concluded that there is no significant difference in terms of the position samples’ accuracy achieved from the developed positioning model and the hybrid system at a particular navigation environment described as rural area. The p-value was 0.08 and the level of significance used was 0.05. However, a significant difference in terms of the service integrity for the advantage of the hybrid system was experienced in all remaining scenarios and environments more especially the urban areas due to surrounding obstacles and conditions.

Applications for Internet-enabled devices use machine learning to process captured data to make intelligent decisions or provide information to users. Typically, the computation to process the data is executed in cloud-based backends. The devices are used for sensing data, offloading it to the cloud, receiving responses and acting upon them. However, this approach leads to high end-to-end latency due to communication over the Internet. This dissertation proposes reducing this response time by minimizing offloading, and pushing computation close to the source of the data, i.e. to edge servers and devices themselves. To adapt to the resource constrained environment at the edge, it presents an approach that leverages spatiotemporal locality to push subparts of the model to the edge. This approach is embodied in a distributed caching framework, Cachier. Cachier is built upon a novel caching model for recognition, and is distributed across edge servers and devices. The analytical caching model for recognition provides a formulation for expected latency for recognition requests in Cachier. The formulation incorporates the effects of compute time and accuracy. It also incorporates network conditions, thus providing a method to compute expected response times under various conditions. This is utilized as a cost function by Cachier, at edge servers and devices. By analyzing requests at the edge server, Cachier caches relevant parts of the trained model at edge servers, which is used to respond to requests, minimizing the number of requests that go to the cloud. Then, Cachier uses context-aware prediction to prefetch parts of the trained model onto devices. The requests can then be processed on the devices, thus minimizing the number of offloaded requests. Finally, Cachier enables cooperation between nearby devices to allow exchanging prefetched data, reducing the dependence on remote servers even further. The efficacy of Cachier is evaluated by using it with an art recognition application. The application is driven using real world traces gathered at museums. By conducting a large-scale study with different control variables, we show that Cachier can lower latency, increase scalability and decrease infrastructure resource usage, while maintaining high accuracy.

Les réseaux cellulaires ont connu une croissance phénoménale du trafic alimentée par les nouvelles technologies d'accès cellulaire. Cette croissance est en grande partie tirée par l'émergence du trafic HTTP adaptatif streaming (HAS) comme une nouvelle technologie de diffusion des contenus vidéo. Le principe du HAS est de rendre disponible plusieurs qualités de la même vidéo en ligne et que les clients choisissent la meilleure qualité qui correspond à leur bande passante. Chaque niveau d'encodage est segmenté en des chunks, qui dont la durée varie de 2 à 10 secondes. L'émergence du HAS a introduit des nouvelles contraintes sur les systèmes de livraison des contenus vidéo en particulier sur les systèmes de caches. Dans ce contexte, nous menons une analyse détaillée des données du trafic HAS collecté en France et fournie par le plus grand opérateur de téléphonie mobile du pays. Tout d'abord, nous analysons et modélisons le comportement des clients qui demandent des contenus VoD et live. Ces analyses nous ont permis d'identifier les facteurs qui impactent la performance des systèmes de cache et de proposer un nouveau algorithme de remplacement de contenus qu'on appelle WA-LRU. WA-LRU exploite la localité temporelle des chunks dans le contenu et la connaissance de la charge du trafic dans le réseau afin d'améliorer la performance du cache. Ensuite, nous analysons et modélisons la logique d'adaptation entre les qualités vidéo basés sur des observations empiriques. Nous montrons que le changement fréquent entre les encodages réduit considérablement la performance des systèmes de cache. Dans ce contexte, nous présentons CF-DASH une implémentation libre d'un player DASH qui vise à réduire les changements fréquents entre qualités, assure une bonne QoE des clients et améliore la performance des systèmes de caches. La deuxième partie de la thèse est dédié à la conception, simulation et implémentation d'une solution de préchargement des contenus vidéo sur terminaux mobiles. Nous concevons un système que nous appelons «Central Predictor System (CPsys)" qui prédit le comportement des clients mobiles et leurs consommations des vidéos. Nous évaluons CPSys avec des traces de trafic réel. Enfin, nous développons une preuve de concept de notre solution de préchargement
Recently, cellular networks have witnessed a phenomenal growth of traffic fueled by new high speed broadband cellular access technologies. This growth is in large part driven by the emergence of the HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) as a new video delivery method. In HAS, several qualities of the same videos are made available in the network so that clients can choose the quality that best fits their bandwidth capacity. This strongly impacts the viewing pattern of the clients, their switching behavior between video qualities, and thus beyond on content delivery systems. In this context, we provide an analysis of a real HAS dataset collected in France and provided by the largest French mobile operator. Firstly, we analyze and model the viewing patterns of VoD and live streaming HAS sessions and we propose a new cache replacement strategy, named WA-LRU. WA-LRU leverages the time locality of video segments within the HAS content. We show that WA-LRU improves the performance of the cache. Second, we analyze and model the adaptation logic between the video qualities based on empirical observations. We show that high switching behaviors lead to sub optimal caching performance, since several versions of the same content compete to be cached. In this context we investigate the benefits of a Cache Friendly HAS system (CF-DASH) which aims at improving the caching efficiency in mobile networks and to sustain the quality of experience of mobile clients. Third, we investigate the mobile video prefetching opportunities. We show that CPSys can achieve high performance as regards prediction correctness and network utilization efficiency. We further show that CPSys outperforms other prefetching schemes from the state of the art. At the end, we provide a proof-of-concept implementation of our prefetching system

Our research posits a context-sensitive, adaptable, assistive services and technology system (CAAST) that takes advantage of the advancements in mobile computing to provide barrier-free access to environmental information and devices. To inform our research we explore the following topics: the deficiencies associated with current assistive technologies; the advances in wireless sensor node technology; the interference and accuracy problems associated with wireless location detection; the coordination problems associated with service discovery; the management and coordination problems associated with decentralized sensor nodes; the separation of information and activities from the human interface; the efficiency and abstraction problems associated with interface description languages; and the adaptation of information and activities to meet the needs of those with disabilities. As a result of our research into these areas we devise an assistive technology, CAAST, that intends to be a comprehensive approach to universal access to information and activities for those with disabilities.
Department of Computer Science

Abstract User experience has become a popular term in research and industry. There has been a great attempt to study and design user experiences. This thesis gives a practical view to user experience studies and methods by reporting test settings and results of the ADAMOS case studies. The goal of the ADAMOS project was to investigate context- and action-sensitive services in terms of how users experience when the system can detect one’s location and actions, and then adjust according to this information. The aim of this thesis is to investigate problems and issues in studying user experiences of mobile services and to find out in which conditions the study of user experience is possible and meaningful. As a contribution this thesis provides practical information for conducting user experience studies and evaluating experiences. The first contribution is a framework (U2E-Frame), which I created and improved iteratively in each test case. The framework is method-independent and it can be used for planning and conducting tests. The second contribution of the thesis is the practical view to all methods that are created, applied, presented and evaluated in this thesis. Especially during this thesis work three novel methods (Mobile Feedback, 3E-Diary and SUE methodology) have been developed and evaluated. The evaluation of the research methods illustrates that the best practice to study user experience is to use several methods together. This enables deeper understanding of user experiences. As the third contribution of this thesis I introduce a proposal of ten user experience heuristics for design and evaluation of user experiences. The aim of these heuristics is to enable designers to understand what meaning user experience has in product design. Developers can use these heuristics for designing and evaluating user experience aspects in product design. This thesis presents the main challenges in user experience research: know what to study (comprehensive user experience), know how to study it (find appropriate methods) and know how to evaluate and design it (user experience heuristics). An answer to the research problem is that it is both possible and meaningful to study user experience when we know user experience targets, and features of the services we want to investigate, and we can use the most appropriate methods, ensure the participant’s commitment to the test and ensure analysing relationships between results collected with different methods.

This report covers theory and comparison of techniques for rendering massive scale 3D geospa- tial planet data in a web browser. It also presents implementation details of a few of these tech- niques in WebGL and Javascript, using the Three.js [1] 3D library. The thesis project is part of the implementation of Unitea, a web based education platform for interactive astronomy visualizations. Unitea is a derivative of Uniview, which is a fulldome interactive simulation of the universe. A major part of this thesis is dedicated to the implementa- tion of Hierarchical Level of Detail (HLOD) modules for Three.js based on the theory presented by T. Ulrich [2] and later generalized by Cozzi and Ring [3]. HLOD techniques are dynamic level of detail algorithms that represent the surface of objects as accurately as possible from a certain viewing angle. By using space partitioning tree-structures, view based error metrics and culling techniques detailed representations of the objects (in this case planets) can be efficiently rendered in real-time. The modules developed provide a general-purpose library for rendering planets (or other spher- ical objects) with dynamic level of detail in Three.js. The library also features connections to online web map services (WMS) and tile services.

A crescente mobilidade de pessoas e recursos materiais exige um esforço constante na exploração das capacidades oferecidas pelas diferentes tecnologias disponíveis, que convergem para o fornecimento de informações e serviços em qualquer lugar com movimento, a qualquer tempo, e por meio de qualquer dispositivo, objetivos da rede mundial de cooperação e comunicação, conhecida como Internet. Em resposta a essa crescente demanda, a atual Internet está evoluindo do modelo de compartilhamento de informações para o modelo de contribuição e em um futuro próximo, para o modelo de colaboração entre provedores e consumidores, denominada de Internet do Futuro. Embora a atual Internet seja extraordinariamente bem sucedida, como um meio ubíquo de comunicação, sua atual arquitetura impõe limites para o provisionamento de serviços em ambientes heterogêneos e convergentes, demandando novas soluções que superem os desafios tecnológicos necessários ao estabelecimento da Internet do Futuro. Estas novas soluções basear-se-ão nos princípios da computação orientada a serviços, formando os componentes de um novo arcabouço de serviços para a Internet do Futuro, denominada de Internet de Serviços. Na Internet de Serviços, redes de comunicação móveis, convergentes e heterogêneas serão criadas sob demanda, disponibilizando um elevado número de serviços, funcionalmente similares, porém distintos sob o ponto de vista não funcional, dificultando a seleção dos serviços que melhor atendem o nível qualidade de serviço acordado entre provedores e consumidores. Este trabalho propõe uma nova solução para o problema de seleção de serviços, combinando algoritmos, usualmente empregados para prospecção de dados, para selecionar serviços de forma dinâmica e interativa, com base em atributos não funcionais, visando suprir as necessidades de mobilidade e colaboração em ambientes convergentes e heterogêneos, como a Internet de Serviços. Desta forma, este trabalho contribui para o projeto de pesquisa da Internet de Serviços, um dos pilares fundamentais para a elaboração da nova arquitetura orientada a serviços, que servirá de arcabouço à construção da Internet do Futuro, possibilitando inúmeras aplicações como Serviços Baseados em Localização e Computação em Nuvem.
The increasing mobility of people and resources demands additional efforts in exploring new capacities, offered by different technologies, which allows the supply of information and services in any place, any time and through any device, objective of the worldwide collaboration and communication web, known as Internet. Face to this increasing demand, current Internet is evolving from sharing to contribution model and in the near future, to collaboration model between providers and consumers. Although the current Internet has been extraordinarily successful, as a ubiquitous and universal means for communication, its architecture imposes limits for services deployment in heterogeneous and convergent environments, demanding new solutions to overcome the technological issues for Internet of Future achievement. These new solutions will be based on service oriented computing principles, providing the components of the new service framework for Internet of Future, called Internet of Services. In Internet of Services, convergent and heterogeneous mobile communication networks will be created on demand, providing a huge numbers of services, similar from functional point of view, but very different from the nonfunctional point of view, creating challenges for service selection which fits the service level agreement between providers and consumers. This work proposes a new solution for service selection process, combining algorithms commonly used for data mining, to perform dynamic and interactive service selection, fulfilling the mobility and collaborative requirements in a convergent and heterogeneous environment, such as Internet of Services. Therefore, this work contributes to Internet of Services research project, one of fundamental pillars to build the service oriented architecture, which will be used as framework for Internet of Future building, allowing many applications such as Location Based Services and Cloud Computing.

Advances in the mobile device manufacture, rapid growth of Web services development and progression of wireless communication with the widespread use of Internet applications are the most recent trends in distributed information systems. The evolution of these trends yields the emergence of Mobile Web Services technology (MWS). Adaptive service provision and execution in mobile environments is a new avenue in MWS. It is emanated from the need to cope with the existence of mobile resource limitations to allow the reliable provision of a number of useful services that are hosted on these mobile devices. This research argues that the mechanisms used to facilitate service distribution allow non-interrupted provision of MWS efficiently. The objective of this research is to investigate these mechanisms and define a system for applying them. The main criteria for this system are flexibility, dynamicity and transparency. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)-based Mobile Host Web service Framework (MHWF) is reproduced and extended as part of this research, to allow deploying, providing and executing SOAP-based services. Correspondingly, Representational State Transfer (RESTful) MHWF is defined and developed for providing RESTful-based services. Both frameworks have been analysed and compared in terms of performance, scalability, reliability and resource consumptions. Moreover, they both have been extended to allow service distribution through offloading, which is the first explored distribution mechanism. RESTful-based technology has shown that it is more convenient for mobile environment. This research also classifies the distribution strategies into three classes: Contentment Distribution (CD), Simple Partial Distribution (SPD) and Complex Partial Distribution (CPD). The distinction emerges from variance in the types and complexity levels of services that influence the quantity and quality of the distribution mechanisms' usage. Novel approaches are proposed in order to exploit these mechanisms and to define and setup the building blocks for the corresponding MHWFs. The correct behaviour of these frameworks is empirically validated and their safety properties are also verified analytically using formal methods. This is complemented by a proof of concept demonstration. Furthermore, an evaluation of their performance is carried out by simulation. These evaluation results are interpreted as Fuzzy logic rules that are used to trigger and control distribution schemes. Last but not least, an innovative approach to partition and orchestrate the execution tasks of the distributed services is followed based on the hierarchical structure used for representing the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the invoked services

Mobile devices must deal with limited and dynamically varying resources, in particular, the network quality of service (QoS). In addition, wireless devices have other constraints such as limited memory, battery power, and physical dimensions. Applications that execute in such environments need to adapt to the dynamic operating conditions in order to preserve an acceptable level of service as close to 100% of the time as possible. Viewing and downloading digital spatial data on mobile devices has become more popular, especially with the availability of location-aware applications that exploit GPS (Global Positioning System) receivers integrated in many of today's mobile devices. Map client applications face many challenges in accessing data across a wireless network. Vector spatial data files tend to be large, and file sizes tend to increase unpredictably depending on the complexity of feature geometry. Due to the limited size of the mobile device display, viewing all the details of the map could cause unreasonable clutter and render the map useless. Even if it is feasible to transmit all the details from a QoS standpoint, this could pose a problem from a usability standpoint. This research effort aims to tackle the issues of QoS and usability on mobile devices through a client-proxy-server model where clients are on mobile devices. The proxy performs two functions. First, it supplies the client with vital data about the status of the system that allows the client to take adaptive decisions aimed at maintaining the QoS. Second, it performs the adaptive actions requested by the client. There are two types of adaptive actions performed by the proxy, activating and deactivating filters. When filters are activated, the amount of data transmitted from the server to the client is reduced. The client may decide to activate one or more filters either to maintain QoS or to limit clutter on the screen and enhance usability. The map client-server application and the proxy were developed in Java (tm), and a number of experiments and real-life scenarios were designed to determine the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed adaptation model and to evaluate the performance of the proxy.

Service robots need to be aware of persons in their vicinity in order to interact with them. People tracking enables the robot to perceive persons by fusing the information of several sensors. Most robots rely on laser range scanners and RGB cameras for this task. The thesis focuses on the detection and tracking of heads. This allows the robot to establish eye contact, which makes interactions feel more natural. Developing a fast and reliable pose-invariant head detector is challenging. The head detector that is proposed in this thesis works well on frontal heads, but is not fully pose-invariant. This thesis further explores adaptive tracking to keep track of heads that do not face the robot. Finally, head detector and adaptive tracker are combined within a new people tracking framework and experiments show its effectiveness compared to a state-of-the-art system.

Today, it is not unusual that smartphone devices can’t survive even one day of regular use until the battery needs to be recharged. The batteries are drained while using power hungry applications made by developers who haven’t taken their application’s energy impact into consideration. In this thesis we study network transmissions as made by a mobile application, and the impact these have on the battery life. The application was developed with the local rescue and emergency service as a hypothetical target group. We test how the mobile network technologies 3G and WiFi together with the device’s current signal strength and battery level affect the energy usage of the battery when uploading data to a server. We develop an adaptation mechanism on application level which uses a mathematical model for calculating a suitable adaptation of scheduling of network interactions. The adaptation mechanism makes use of burst buffering of packets, and adjusts for 3G tail times as well as for different priorities of incoming requests. Custom packet scheduling profiles are made to make consistent measurements, and with this implementation we are able to reduce the amount of energy consumed using 3G and WiFi with 67 % and 39 % respectively during tests.

Le trafic de vidéo streaming étant en très forte augmentation dans les réseaux mobiles, il devient essentiel pour les opérateurs de tenir compte des spécificités de ce trafic pour bien dimensionner et configurer le réseau. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à la modélisation du trafic de vidéo streaming dans les réseaux mobiles. Pour le trafic de vidéo streaming en temps-réel, nous obtenons une forme analytique pour une métrique de qualité de service (QoS) importante, le taux de perte de paquets, et utilisons ce modèle à faire du dimensionnement. Pour le trafic de vidéo streaming de type HTTP adaptatif, nous proposons et analysons d’autres métriques de QoS comme le bitrate moyen, le taux de déficit vidéo et le surplus de buffer, afin de trouver le bon compromis entre résolution de la vidéo et fluidité de la diffusion vidéo. Nous étudions par simulation l’impact de quelque paramètres clés du systéme. Nous montrons que l’utilisation de segments de vidéo courts, d’un nombre réduit d’encodages vidéos et de l’ordonnancement de type round robin améliore la fluidité de la vidéo tout en diminuant sa résolution. Nous proposons par ailleurs d’adapter le nombre des segments téléchargés dans une requête HTTP de sorte que chaque requête corresponde au même volume de données. Enfin, nous appliquons les techniques de l’apprentissage automatique pour analyser la corrélation entre les caracteristiques du système et la qualité d’expérience (QoE) des utilisateurs
As the traffic of video streaming increases significantly in mobile networks, it is essential for oper- ators to account for the features of this traffic when dimensioning and configuring the network. The focus of this thesis is on traffic models of video streaming in mobile networks. For real-time video streaming traffic, we derive an analytical form for an important Quality-of-Service (QoS) metric, the packet outage rate, and utilize the model for dimensioning. For HTTP adaptive video streaming traffic, we propose and evaluate other QoS metrics such as the mean video bit rate, the deficit rate and the buffer surplus, so as to find the good trade-off between video resolution and playback smoothness. We study by simulation the impacts of some key parameters of the system. We show that using smaller chunk durations, fewer video coding rates and round-robin scheduling may provide a smoother video playback but decrease the mean video resolution. We also propose to adapt the number of chunks downloaded in an HTTP request so that each HTTP request has the same data volume. Finally, we apply machine learning techniques to analyze the correlation between system characteristics and the quality of experience (QoE) of users

Le trafic vidéo a subi une augmentation fulgurante sur Internet ces dernières années. Pour pallier à cette importante demande de contenu vidéo, la technologie du streaming adaptatif sur HTTP est utilisée. Elle est devenue par ailleurs très populaire car elle a été adoptée par les différents acteurs du domaine de la vidéo streaming. C’est une technologie moins couteuse qui permet aux fournisseurs de contenu, la réutilisation des serveurs web et des caches déjà déployés. En plus, elle est exempt de tout blocage car elle traverse facilement les pare-feux et les translations d’adresses sur Internet. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une nouvelle méthode de vidéo streaming adaptatif appelé “Backward-Shifted Coding (BSC)”. Il se veut être une solution complémentaire au standard DASH, le streaming adaptatif et dynamique utilisant le protocole HTTP. Nous allons d’abord décrire ce qu’est la technologie BSC qui se base sur le codec (encodeur décodeur) à multi couches SVC, un algorithme de compression extensible ou évolutif. Nous détaillons aussi l’implémentation de BSC dans un environnement DASH. Ensuite,nous réalisons une évaluation analytique de BSC en utilisant des résultats standards de la théorie des files d’attente. Les résultats de cette analyse mathématique montrent que le protocole BSC permet de réduire considérablement le risque d’interruption de la vidéo pendant la lecture, ce dernier étant très pénalisant pour les utilisateurs. Ces résultats vont nous permettre de concevoir des algorithmes d’adaptation de qualité à la bande passante en vue d’améliorer l’expérience utilisateur. Ces algorithmes permettent d’améliorer la qualité de la vidéo même étant dans un environnement où le débit utilisateur est très instable.La dernière étape de la thèse consiste à la conception de stratégies de caching pour optimiser la transmission de contenu vidéo utilisant le codec SVC. En effet, dans le réseau, des serveurs de cache sont déployés dans le but de rapprocher le contenu vidéo auprès des utilisateurs pour réduire les délais de transmission et améliorer la qualité de la vidéo. Nous utilisons la programmation linéaire pour obtenir la solution optimale de caching afin de le comparer avec nos algorithmes proposés. Nous montrons que ces algorithmes augmentent la performance du système tout en permettant de décharger les liens de transmission du réseau cœur
Due to the growth of video traffic over the Internet in recent years, HTTP AdaptiveStreaming (HAS) solution becomes the most popular streaming technology because ithas been succesfully adopted by the different actors in Internet video ecosystem. Itallows the service providers to use traditional stateless web servers and mobile edgecaches for streaming videos. Further, it allows users to access media content frombehind Firewalls and NATs.In this thesis we focus on the design of a novel video streaming delivery solutioncalled Backward-Shifted Coding (BSC), a complementary solution to Dynamic AdaptiveStreaming over HTTP (DASH), the standard version of HAS. We first describe theBackward-Shifted Coding scheme architecture based on the multi-layer Scalable VideoCoding (SVC). We also discuss the implementation of BSC protocol in DASH environment.Then, we perform the analytical evaluation of the Backward-Sihifted Codingusing results from queueing theory. The analytical results show that BSC considerablydecreases the video playback interruption which is the worst event that users can experienceduring the video session. Therefore, we design bitrate adaptation algorithms inorder to enhance the Quality of Experience (QoE) of the users in DASH/BSC system.The results of the proposed adaptation algorithms show that the flexibility of BSC allowsus to improve both the video quality and the variations of the quality during thestreaming session.Finally, we propose new caching policies to be used with video contents encodedusing SVC. Indeed, in DASH/BSC system, cache servers are deployed to make contentsclosed to the users in order to reduce network latency and improve user-perceived experience.We use Linear Programming to obtain optimal static cache composition tocompare with the results of our proposed algorithms. We show that these algorithmsincrease the system overall hit ratio and offload the backhaul links by decreasing thefetched content from the origin web servers

[EN] This thesis dissertation tackles the problem concerning provision of video streaming services over mobile wireless ad hoc networks. Such networks are characterized by their versatility and flexibility, features that make them particularly suited to be used in many scenarios. However, some limitations inherited of the wireless channel and the mobility of the nodes make difficult to guarantee certain degree of quality of service, which is a required condition to the multimedia applications. Furthermore, with the massive demand of video content, it has become very necessary for mobile ad hoc networks to have an efficient routing and quality of services mechanisms to support this traffic. This is because video streaming services require network to provide sufficient bandwidth and an upper bound in delay, jitter and loss rate. Consequently, traditional best-effort protocols are not adequate. The main contribution of this thesis is the development of a comprehensive routing protocol that has a feedback scheme in order to provide information to the application about the network conditions. This protocol has a cross-layer architecture and it incorporates three important enhancements. Firstly, a new route recovery strategy, which provides a mechanism to detect the link failures in a route and re-establish the connections taking into account the conditions of quality of service that have been established during the previous route discovery phase. Secondly, an algorithm for the estimation of the available bandwidth along the route, information that is sent to application layer in order to apply an adaptation procedure that adjusts the bit rate of the video source. This rate-adaptive strategy is performed exploiting the layered scheme of the scalable video coding. In particular, the adaptive method removes, from the scalable video stream, those layers that could not be efficiently supported by network since their bitrates exceed the available bandwidth. The third main feature of the proposed routing protocol is a gateway discovery algorithm to improve the interconnectivity between mobile ad hoc networks and infrastructure-based networks. This algorithm incorporates available bandwidth as a metric during the gateway selection and a dynamic adaptation of some operational parameters such as the size of the proactive area and the frequency of the advertisement messages. Additionally, in order to solve the lack of a software tool to simulate rate-adaptive transmission of scalable video, a new simulation framework had be implemented. This simulation tool is an open source software freely available and, thus, it represents other contribution of this thesis. The results reveal performance improvements in terms of packet delay, dropped packets and the number of link failures while a more efficient use of the available bandwidth is obtained. In terms of video transmission, the results prove that the combined use of the proposed protocol and the scalable video coding provides an efficient platform for supporting rate-adaptive video streaming over mobile ad hoc networks.
[ES] Esta tesis aborda los problemas relacionados con los servicios de video en modo streaming sobre las redes móviles ad hoc. Este tipo de redes se caracterizan por su versatilidad y flexibilidad, lo cual las hace especialmente adecuadas para ser utilizadas en diversos escenarios. Sin embargo, algunas limitaciones inherentes a los enlaces inalámbricos y a la movilidad de los nodos, hace difícil garantizar cierto nivel de calidad de servicio, lo cual es una condición necesaria para el transporte de flujos multimedia. Además, con la masiva demanda de videos desde los dispositivos móviles, hace aún más necesario asegurar un encaminamiento eficiente y un cierto nivel de calidad de servicio en las redes móviles ad hoc. Por lo tanto, los tradicionales protocolos que funcionan bajo el modelo del "mejor esfuerzo" no son adecuados. Esto se debe principalmente a que las aplicaciones multimedia necesitan que la red asegure suficiente ancho de banda y unos valores máximos de retardo, jitter, y tasa de pérdidas. La principal contribución de esta tesis es el desarrollo de un protocolo de encaminamiento que contiene un esquema de realimentación que le permite informar a la aplicación sobre las condiciones de la red. Este protocolo tiene una arquitectura cross-layer e incorpora tres importantes mejoras. Primero, una nueva estrategia de mantenimiento y recuperación de rutas que provee mecanismos para detectar los fallos de conectividad y el posterior re-establecimiento de las conexiones, teniendo en cuenta las condiciones de calidad de servicio que fueron establecidas durante la etapa inicial del descubrimiento de las rutas. Segundo, un algoritmo para la estimación del ancho de banda disponible a lo largo de la ruta, información que es enviada a la capa de aplicación para aplicar un proceso de adaptación que ajusta la tasa de envío de datos de la fuente. Esta estrategia adaptativa de la tasa aprovecha el esquema por capas de la codificación escalable de video. En particular, el método adaptativo elimina del flujo de video escalable, aquellas capas que no pueden ser transmitidas por la red ya que su tasa de bits supera el ancho de banda disponible. La tercera mejora incluida en el protocolo propuesto es un algoritmo de descubrimiento de gateways para mejorar la interconectividad entre las redes móviles ad hoc y las redes basadas en infraestructura. Dicho algoritmo utiliza el ancho de banda disponible para seleccionar el mejor gateway, así mismo, realiza una adaptación dinámica de algunos parámetros operacionales como el alcance y la frecuencia de los mensajes anuncio. Adicionalmente, ha sido desarrollada una herramienta software para simular la transmisión adaptativa de video escalable sobre redes móviles ad hoc. Esta herramienta de simulación es un software de código abierto y constituye otra contribución más de esta tesis. Los resultados muestran mejoras en el funcionamiento de las redes relacionadas con el retardo, la tasa de pérdidas de paquetes y el número de fallos en la conectividad. Simultáneamente, se obtiene un uso más eficiente del ancho de banda. En relación a la calidad del video transmitido, los resultados demuestran que la utilización del protocolo propuesto junto con la codificación de video escalable, provee un eficiente sistema para la transmisión adaptativa de video escalable sobre redes móviles ad hoc.
[CAT] Aquesta tesi aborda els problemes relacionats amb els serveis de vídeo en mode streaming sobre les xarxes mòbils ad hoc. Aquest tipus de xarxes es caracteritzen per la seva versatilitat i flexibilitat, la qual cosa les fa especialment adequades per a ser utilitzades en diversos escenaris. No obstant això, algunes limitacions inherents als enllaços sense fils i a la mobilitat dels nodes, fa difícil garantir cert nivell de qualitat de servei, cosa que és una condició necessària per al transport de fluxos multimèdia. A més, amb la massiva demanda de vídeos des dels dispositius mòbils, fa encara més necessari assegurar un encaminament eficient i un cert nivell de qualitat de servei en les xarxes mòbils ad hoc. Per tant, els tradicionals protocols que funcionen sota el model del "millor esforç" no són adequats. Això es deu principalment al fet que les aplicacions multimèdia necessiten que la xarxa asseguri suficient ample de banda i uns valors màxims de retard, jitter, i taxa de pèrdues. La principal contribució d'aquesta tesi és el desenvolupament d'un protocol d'encaminament que conté un esquema de realimentació que li permet informar l'aplicació sobre les condicions de la xarxa. Aquest protocol té una arquitectura cross-layer i incorpora tres importants millores. Primer, una nova estratègia de manteniment i recuperació de rutes que proveeix mecanismes per detectar les fallades de connectivitat i el posterior re-establiment de les connexions, tenint en compte les condicions de qualitat de servei que van ser establertes durant l'etapa inicial del descobriment de les rutes. Segon, un algoritme per a l'estimació de l'ample de banda disponible al llarg de la ruta, informació que és enviada a la capa d'aplicació per aplicar un procés d'adaptació que ajusta la taxa d'enviament de dades de la font. Aquesta estratègia adaptativa de la taxa aprofita l'esquema per capes de la codificació escalable de vídeo. En particular, el mètode adaptatiu elimina del flux de vídeo escalable aquelles capes que no poden ser transmeses per la xarxa ja que la seva taxa de bits supera l'ample de banda disponible. La tercera millora inclosa en el protocol proposat és un algoritme de descobriment de gateways per millorar la interconnectivitat entre les xarxes mòbils ad hoc i les xarxes basades en infraestructura. Aquest algoritme utilitza l'ample de banda disponible per seleccionar el millor gateway, així mateix, realitza una adaptació dinàmica d'alguns paràmetres operacionals com l'abast i la freqüència dels missatges anunci. Addicionalment, ha estat desenvolupada una eina programari per a simular la transmissió adaptativa de vídeo escalable sobre xarxes mòbils ad hoc. Aquesta eina de simulació és un programari de codi obert i constitueix una altra contribució més d'aquesta tesi. Els resultats mostren millores en el funcionament de les xarxes relacionades amb el retard, la taxa de pèrdues de paquets i el nombre de fallades en la connectivitat. Simultàniament, se n'obté un ús més eficient de l'ample de banda. En relació a la qualitat del vídeo transmès, els resultats demostren que la utilització del protocol proposat juntament amb la codificació de vídeo escalable, proveeix un eficient sistema per a la transmissió adaptativa de vídeo escalable sobre xarxes mòbils ad hoc.
Castellanos Hernández, WE. (2015). Quality of Service Routing and Mechanisms for Improving Video Streaming over Mobile Wireless Ad hoc Networks [Tesis doctoral]. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/53238
TESIS

On etudie principalement la faisabilite d'une antenne adaptative simple et de faible cout utilisee en communication mobile. Le principe de fonctionnement consiste a minimiser l'ecart entre le signal recu et un signal de reference le plus proche possible du signal utile que l'on cherche a recevoir. La commande de l'antenne est realisee par microprocesseur a partir des produits d'intercorrelation entre les signaux issus de chacun des elements de l'antenne et entre ces memes signaux et le signal de reference

Dans ce travail, une approche auto-adaptative, basée sur les agents mobiles et inspirée du système immunitaire de l'Homme, pour la découverte de services dans un réseau à grande échelle est présentée. Le système immunitaire possède un ensemble de principes de fonctionnement tels que l'auto-régulation et l'auto-organisation qui lui permettent de s'adapter à un environnement dont l'évolution est dynamique et aléatoire. L'utilisation de ces principes permet, d'une part, de réguler dynamiquement et d'une manière distribuée la taille d'une population d'agents mobiles et d'autre part, d'organiser les serveurs en communautés par la création de réseaux d'affinités pour représenter les services dans le réseau. L'établissement des liens affinités entre les serveurs permet de résoudre, par collaboration, les requêtes des utilisateurs. Un mécanisme d'apprentissage par renforcement des valeurs des liens d'affinités entre les serveurs est présenté. Ce mécanisme d'apprentissage permet au système de découverte de s'adapter d'une manière dynamique à la disponibilité des services et aux requêtes des utilisateurs
In this work, a self-adaptive approach based on mobile agent paradigm and inspired by the human immune system for dynamic service discovery in large scale network is presented. The immune system has a set of organizing principles such as self-organization and self-regulation that enable it to be adapted to dynamic environment. These principles are used, in one hand, to dynamically regulate the population size of mobile agents and, in the other hand, to organize servers into communities by the creation of affinity relationships in order to represent services in the network. The establishment of relationship affinities between servers allows to solve, by collaboration, the user requests. A reinforcement learning mechanism by dynamic adjustment of relationship affinity values is presented. This reinforcement mechanism permits to the to cope with dynamic changes in the network, the services availability and the user requests

La quinta generación de redes móviles (5G) se encuentra a la vuelta de la esquina. Se espera provea de beneficios extraordinarios a la población y que resuelva la mayoría de los problemas de las redes 4G actuales. El éxito de 5G, cuya primera fase de estandarización ha sido completada, depende de tres pilares: comunicaciones tipo-máquina masivas, banda ancha móvil mejorada y comunicaciones ultra fiables y de baja latencia (mMTC, eMBB y URLLC, respectivamente). En esta tesis nos enfocamos en el primer pilar de 5G, mMTC, pero también proveemos una solución para lograr eMBB en escenarios de distribución masiva de contenidos. Específicamente, las principales contribuciones son en las áreas de: 1) soporte eficiente de mMTC en redes celulares; 2) acceso aleatorio para el reporte de eventos en redes inalámbricas de sensores (WSNs); y 3) cooperación para la distribución masiva de contenidos en redes celulares. En el apartado de mMTC en redes celulares, esta tesis provee un análisis profundo del desempeño del procedimiento de acceso aleatorio, que es la forma mediante la cual los dispositivos móviles acceden a la red. Estos análisis fueron inicialmente llevados a cabo por simulaciones y, posteriormente, por medio de un modelo analítico. Ambos modelos fueron desarrollados específicamente para este propósito e incluyen uno de los esquemas de control de acceso más prometedores: access class barring (ACB). Nuestro modelo es uno de los más precisos que se pueden encontrar en la literatura y el único que incorpora el esquema de ACB. Los resultados obtenidos por medio de este modelo y por simulación son claros: los accesos altamente sincronizados que ocurren en aplicaciones de mMTC pueden causar congestión severa en el canal de acceso. Por otro lado, también son claros en que esta congestión se puede prevenir con una adecuada configuración del ACB. Sin embargo, los parámetros de configuración del ACB deben ser continuamente adaptados a la intensidad de accesos para poder obtener un desempeño óptimo. En la tesis se propone una solución práctica a este problema en la forma de un esquema de configuración automática para el ACB; lo llamamos ACBC. Los resultados muestran que nuestro esquema puede lograr un desempeño muy cercano al óptimo sin importar la intensidad de los accesos. Asimismo, puede ser directamente implementado en redes celulares para soportar el tráfico mMTC, ya que ha sido diseñado teniendo en cuenta los estándares del 3GPP. Además de los análisis descritos anteriormente para redes celulares, se realiza un análisis general para aplicaciones de contadores inteligentes. Es decir, estudiamos un escenario de mMTC desde la perspectiva de las WSNs. Específicamente, desarrollamos un modelo híbrido para el análisis de desempeño y la optimización de protocolos de WSNs de acceso aleatorio y basados en cluster. Los resultados muestran la utilidad de escuchar el medio inalámbrico para minimizar el número de transmisiones y también de modificar las probabilidades de transmisión después de una colisión. En lo que respecta a eMBB, nos enfocamos en un escenario de distribución masiva de contenidos, en el que un mismo contenido es enviado de forma simultánea a un gran número de usuarios móviles. Este escenario es problemático, ya que las estaciones base de la red celular no cuentan con mecanismos eficientes de multicast o broadcast. Por lo tanto, la solución que se adopta comúnmente es la de replicar e contenido para cada uno de los usuarios que lo soliciten; está claro que esto es altamente ineficiente. Para resolver este problema, proponemos el uso de esquemas de network coding y de arquitecturas cooperativas llamadas nubes móviles. En concreto, desarrollamos un protocolo para la distribución masiva de contenidos, junto con un modelo analítico para su optimización. Los resultados demuestran que el modelo propuesto es simple y preciso, y que el protocolo puede reducir el con
La cinquena generació de xarxes mòbils (5G) es troba molt a la vora. S'espera que proveïsca de beneficis extraordinaris a la població i que resolga la majoria dels problemes de les xarxes 4G actuals. L'èxit de 5G, per a la qual ja ha sigut completada la primera fase del qual d'estandardització, depén de tres pilars: comunicacions tipus-màquina massives, banda ampla mòbil millorada, i comunicacions ultra fiables i de baixa latència (mMTC, eMBB i URLLC, respectivament, per les seues sigles en anglés). En aquesta tesi ens enfoquem en el primer pilar de 5G, mMTC, però també proveïm una solució per a aconseguir eMBB en escenaris de distribució massiva de continguts. Específicament, les principals contribucions són en les àrees de: 1) suport eficient de mMTC en xarxes cel·lulars; 2) accés aleatori per al report d'esdeveniments en xarxes sense fils de sensors (WSNs); i 3) cooperació per a la distribució massiva de continguts en xarxes cel·lulars. En l'apartat de mMTC en xarxes cel·lulars, aquesta tesi realitza una anàlisi profunda de l'acompliment del procediment d'accés aleatori, que és la forma mitjançant la qual els dispositius mòbils accedeixen a la xarxa. Aquestes anàlisis van ser inicialment dutes per mitjà de simulacions i, posteriorment, per mitjà d'un model analític. Els models van ser desenvolupats específicament per a aquest propòsit i inclouen un dels esquemes de control d'accés més prometedors: el access class barring (ACB). El nostre model és un dels més precisos que es poden trobar i l'únic que incorpora l'esquema d'ACB. Els resultats obtinguts per mitjà d'aquest model i per simulació són clars: els accessos altament sincronitzats que ocorren en aplicacions de mMTC poden causar congestió severa en el canal d'accés. D'altra banda, també són clars en què aquesta congestió es pot previndre amb una adequada configuració de l'ACB. No obstant això, els paràmetres de configuració de l'ACB han de ser contínuament adaptats a la intensitat d'accessos per a poder obtindre unes prestacions òptimes. En la tesi es proposa una solució pràctica a aquest problema en la forma d'un esquema de configuració automàtica per a l'ACB; l'anomenem ACBC. Els resultats mostren que el nostre esquema pot aconseguir un acompliment molt proper a l'òptim sense importar la intensitat dels accessos. Així mateix, pot ser directament implementat en xarxes cel·lulars per a suportar el trànsit mMTC, ja que ha sigut dissenyat tenint en compte els estàndards del 3GPP. A més de les anàlisis descrites anteriorment per a xarxes cel·lulars, es realitza una anàlisi general per a aplicacions de comptadors intel·ligents. És a dir, estudiem un escenari de mMTC des de la perspectiva de les WSNs. Específicament, desenvolupem un model híbrid per a l'anàlisi de prestacions i l'optimització de protocols de WSNs d'accés aleatori i basats en clúster. Els resultats mostren la utilitat d'escoltar el mitjà sense fil per a minimitzar el nombre de transmissions i també de modificar les probabilitats de transmissió després d'una col·lisió. Pel que fa a eMBB, ens enfoquem en un escenari de distribució massiva de continguts, en el qual un mateix contingut és enviat de forma simultània a un gran nombre d'usuaris mòbils. Aquest escenari és problemàtic, ja que les estacions base de la xarxa cel·lular no compten amb mecanismes eficients de multicast o broadcast. Per tant, la solució que s'adopta comunament és la de replicar el contingut per a cadascun dels usuaris que ho sol·liciten; és clar que això és altament ineficient. Per a resoldre aquest problema, proposem l'ús d'esquemes de network coding i d'arquitectures cooperatives anomenades núvols mòbils. En concret, desenvolupem un protocol per a realitzar la distribució massiva de continguts de forma eficient, juntament amb un model analític per a la seua optimització. Els resultats demostren que el model proposat és simple i precís
The 5th generation (5G) of mobile networks is just around the corner. It is expected to bring extraordinary benefits to the population and to solve the majority of the problems of current 4th generation (4G) systems. The success of 5G, whose first phase of standardization has concluded, relies in three pillars that correspond to its main use cases: massive machine-type communication (mMTC), enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), and ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC). This thesis mainly focuses on the first pillar of 5G: mMTC, but also provides a solution for the eMBB in massive content delivery scenarios. Specifically, its main contributions are in the areas of: 1) efficient support of mMTC in cellular networks; 2) random access (RA) event-reporting in wireless sensor networks (WSNs); and 3) cooperative massive content delivery in cellular networks. Regarding mMTC in cellular networks, this thesis provides a thorough performance analysis of the RA procedure (RAP), used by the mobile devices to switch from idle to connected mode. These analyses were first conducted by simulation and then by an analytical model; both of these were developed with this specific purpose and include one of the most promising access control schemes: the access class barring (ACB). To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the most accurate analytical models reported in the literature and the only one that incorporates the ACB scheme. Our results clearly show that the highly-synchronized accesses that occur in mMTC applications can lead to severe congestion. On the other hand, it is also clear that congestion can be prevented with an adequate configuration of the ACB scheme. However, the configuration parameters of the ACB scheme must be continuously adapted to the intensity of access attempts if an optimal performance is to be obtained. We developed a practical solution to this problem in the form of a scheme to automatically configure the ACB; we call it access class barring configuration (ACBC) scheme. The results show that our ACBC scheme leads to a near-optimal performance regardless of the intensity of access attempts. Furthermore, it can be directly implemented in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) cellular systems to efficiently handle mMTC because it has been designed to comply with the 3GPP standards. In addition to the analyses described above for cellular networks, a general analysis for smart metering applications is performed. That is, we study an mMTC scenario from the perspective of event detection and reporting WSNs. Specifically, we provide a hybrid model for the performance analysis and optimization of cluster-based RA WSN protocols. Results showcase the utility of overhearing to minimize the number of packet transmissions, but also of the adaptation of transmission parameters after a collision occurs. Building on this, we are able to provide some guidelines that can drastically increase the performance of a wide range of RA protocols and systems in event reporting applications. Regarding eMBB, we focus on a massive content delivery scenario in which the exact same content is transmitted to a large number of mobile users simultaneously. Such a scenario may arise, for example, with video streaming services that offer a particularly popular content. This is a problematic scenario because cellular base stations have no efficient multicast or broadcast mechanisms. Hence, the traditional solution is to replicate the content for each requesting user, which is highly inefficient. To solve this problem, we propose the use of network coding (NC) schemes in combination with cooperative architectures named mobile clouds (MCs). Specifically, we develop a protocol for efficient massive content delivery, along with the analytical model for its optimization. Results show the proposed model is simple and accurate, and the protocol can lead to energy savings of up to 37 percent when compared to the traditional approach.
Leyva Mayorga, I. (2018). On reliable and energy efficient massive wireless communications: the road to 5G [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/115484
TESIS

Negli ultimi anni abbiamo assistito ad un notevole aumento del traffico dati mobile, trend confermato anche per il futuro, generato in gran parte da dispositivi smart e perlopiù legato alla metodica di accesso e scambio dati nota con il nome di video streaming. Si stima infatti che circa l'80% della bandwidth mobile mondiale nel 2021 sarà utilizzata per lo scambio di dati audio/video. Risulta dunque di fondamentale importanza per i provider di rete e dei servizi di video streaming, soprattutto quelli forniti on-demand, cercare di comprendere quali sono i parametri che maggiormente influenzano la cosiddetta QoE - Quality of Experience sperimentata dagli utenti finali, in modo da garantire loro il miglior servizio possibile (QoS - Quality of Service), mantenendo comunque alti i profitti. Nell'ambito delle applicazioni e servizi di video streaming, in particolare, la qualità percepita dagli utenti finali risulta fortemente influenzata da diversi effetti di degradazione che possono verificarsi a causa di cattive condizioni di rete, soprattutto nello specifico ambito della mobilità. Da questi studi risulta come, ad esempio, gli utenti preferiscono sperimentare effetti di degradazione temporale durante la riproduzione di contenui multimediali piuttosto che effetti di degradazione della qualità, risultati da cui derivano scelte implementative quali, ad esempio, l'utilizzo del protocollo TCP e la nascita del cosiddetto HTTP-based adaptive streaming, ovvero quella tecnica che permette di adattare la qualità dei segmenti scaricati in base al throughput, in modo da minimizzare il numero di interruzioni del servizio e massimizzare, al contempo, la qualità del media in download. Dopo una rapida analisi delle principali tecnologie oggi utilizzate, si evince come vi sia la necessità di definire un unico formato per il manifest e per la struttura dei segmenti. Si arriva così alla definizione dello standard MPEG-DASH con le proprie euristiche di adattamento.

碩士
國立屏東科技大學
資訊管理系
91
Continuous progress in the technologies of wireless communications and handheld mobile devices is driving ubiquitous support of delivering multimedia information to a large population of end users. One of the promising emerging applications is the location-aware mobile information service. In such a service, a user gets his/her present location through a global positioning system (GPS) and feeds it to the backend information service provider (ISP). ISP uses that location information to search the information (pre-stored in its local database) around that area and deliver it to the user in various multimedia formats. One of the major challenges is that in a mobile environment the system usually have limited resources and dynamically changed status. Without proper management on the information formats to be delivered, we may have frequent information blocking or unacceptable long delay. Therefore, in this thesis, we propose an adaptive quality-of-service (QoS) model for the location-aware mobile information service. The model defines several presentation styles of information and automatically applies the style which is most suitable to the current statuses of individual users (e.g., network round-trip time, download time and loss rate). A prototype system has been implemented. The experiments results confirm that the adaptive QoS model can effectively reduce the information-blocking rate and avoid exceeding waiting time. Hence, it helps the information availability of the location-aware mobile information service.

This thesis presents the design and analysis of Spasiba, a context-aware mobile advisor. We argue that current context-aware mobile applications exhibit significant flaws with respect to (1) limited use of context information, (2) incomplete or irrelevant content generation, and (3) low usability. The proposed model attempts to tackle these limitations by advancing the usage and manipulation of context information, automating the back-end systems in terms of self-management and seamless extensibility, and shifting the logic away from the client side. A distinguishing characteristic of Spasiba is the proactive approach to notifying the user of information of interest. In this proactive approach, the user subscribes to the service and receives content updates as the context changes. This proposed model is realised in a proof-of-concept prototype that uses a Nokia Web Runtime widget as the client application. The widget, which sports an elegant, touch-optimised interface, collects multiple context parameters to deliver high-quality results. The server-side architecture employs the publish/subscribe paradigm for managing the active users and Comet—for proactively notifying the clients of updated information of interest. IRS-III, a Semantic Web Services broker, handles the process of content generation. The prototype employs nine data sources, seven of which are open API web services and two of which are regular web pages, to deliver diverse and complete results. A simple autonomic element, implemented with the help of aspect-oriented programming, ensures partial self-management of the back-end systems. Spasiba is evaluated by means of a case study that involves a tourist couple visiting Victoria. The application assists the tourist couple with finding attractions, relevant stores, and places serving food.

碩士
元智大學
資訊工程學系
97
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) can be considered as a user centric service in the sense that the choice of the programs to watch depends essentially on the user and not on the IPTV service provider. IPTV will support user feedback and personal content delivery which allow the users to make use of other service enablers within an IPTV session like video conference, E-shopping, etc. Indeed, the interactive IPTV service uses bidirectional signal to handle viewer requests to access different services. Hence, this paper will propose a novel radio resource management considering interactive IPTV services includes call admission policy and dynamic resource reservation management (DRRM) in mobile WiMAX networks. The objective of this paper has two particular characteristics: 1) the call admission policy provides QoS guarantees to allow real-time connection services especially considering interactive IPTV services; 2) two multi-guard band schemes are designed within DRRM in order to adjust the thresholds adaptively based on the network status, and focus on admission control of connections to improve the call dropping probabilities and utilize the resource more efficiently considering interactive IPTV services in the mobile WiMAX environment.

碩士
逢甲大學
資訊工程所
90
Technological advances and rapid development in handheld wireless terminals have facilitated the rapid growth of wireless communications. An efficient allocation and management of wireless channels for communications is a matter of vital importance to significantly improve the communication services. Taking ergonomic and economic into account, the shift of many conventional wired multimedia applications to wireless platforms is a new trend. Accordingly, channel allocations need to satisfy the requirements of multimedia applications. For multimedia applications, distinct-type calls have distinct bandwidth requirements and accordingly, need to be assigned distinct number of channels to satisfy the requested services. In order to provide necessary communication qualities and increase the traffic-carrying capacity, efficient assignment of wireless channels for multimedia communications is necessary. This work presents a distributed multi-channel assignment scheme for large-scale wireless mobile networks. A weight-based multi-channel selection scheme and a rate adaptation mechanism are proposed that facilitate to compact co-channel cells and adapt to the quality of real-time applications for satisfying users’ requirement. Simulation results demonstrate that our scheme outperforms other channel allocation schemes for multi-channel assignment, especially in large-scale mobile wireless networks.

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This paper is focused on the design of an adaptive Connection Admission Control (CAC) algorithm for a Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) based satellite system with variable link capacity. The main feature of the proposed algorithm is to maximize the resource utilization by adapting to the link conditions and the antenna gain of the users. The link quality of the user may vary depending on the weather condition, user mobility and any other propagation factors. The algorithm is compared against a non-adaptive admission control algorithm under different test cases. The proposed CAC algorithm is simulated using MATLAB and the performance results are obtained for a mix of multimedia traffic classes such as video streaming, web browsing, netted voice and email. The simulation results indicate a higher system performance in terms of the blocking ratio and the number of admitted connections.

In this paper, we introduce a framework for the adaptive control of universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) networks in order to improve bandwidth utilization of the radio channels. The key contribution of the paper constitutes the introduction of a performance management information base for dynamically adjusting the packet scheduler and admission controller. Thus, the adaptive control framework closes the loop between network operation and network control. Furthermore, the adaptive control framework can effectively deal with the different time scales of packet scheduling and admission control. Moreover, we present a traffic model for non-real-time UMTS traffic based on measured trace data. The analysis and scaling process of the measured trace data with respect to different UMTS bandwidth classes constitutes the basic concept of this traffic characterization. Using this traffic model and simulation on the IP level, the gain of employing the adaptive control framework is illustrated by performance curves for various quality of service measures.

Augmented Reality (AR) has become a popular interactive technique in the last few years. One of the critical challenges is to identify the real-life objects. Further, how to fully exert the advantages of the AR technique under the limited resources available on the mobile devices is another critical challenge. To resolve the above issue, firstly this thesis reviewed the real-life object tagging and identification techniques. Secondly this thesis studied the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Interface and the environmental sensors on the mobile phones. Lastly this thesis implemented a Multiple Real-life Object Identification Algorithm along with the development of the Multi Object Identification Augmented Reality (MOIAR) application. Subsequently, the MOIAR application has been implemented in the location-based mobile learning environment, where the Legislative Assembly of Alberta is included as an example real-life learning object. This MOIAR implementation has applied the tagging and identification technique review as well as the HCI and sensors study, to prove the usability and practicability of the MOIAR application.
2012-01

User desire for ubiquitous applications on-board a vehicle motivates the necessity for Network Mobility (NEMO) solutions for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). Due to the dynamic topology of VANETs, this approach incurs excessive infrastructure cost to maintain stable connectivity and support these applications. Our solution to this problem is focused on a novel NEMO-based Network Architecture where vehicles are the main network infrastructure. Within this Architecture, we present a Network Criticality-based clustering algorithm, which adapts to mobility changes to form stable self-organizing clusters of vehicles and dynamically builds on vehicle clusters to form more stable Mobile Networks. Simulation results show that the proposed method provides more stable clusters, lower handoffs and better connectivity compared to popular density-based vehicle clustering methods. In addition, they confirm the validity of the proposed Network Architecture. The proposed method is also robust to channel error and exhibits better performance when the heterogeneity of vehicles is exploited.

碩士
國立中央大學
資訊工程研究所
94
The location-based routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) use geographic information to achieve higher scalability and lower control overhead than those of the topology-based routing protocols, e.g. AODV and DSR, etc. However, location-based routing protocols rely on location services scheme to provide them with the location information of the destination position, so they can forward packets to the destination properly. To keep the advantage of the location-based routing protocol, the location service should has as high as possible scalability and as low as possible control overhead. This paper proposes SEEKER to accomplish such goals. The basic idea of SEEKER is the aggregate update that integrates a group of position updates to perform them altogether. In this way, we reduce a lot of location maintenance (update) overhead, and meanwhile query success rate is kept comparably high. Moreover, SEEKER can adapt to mobility by changing the frequency of the aggregate update. This can make SEEKER save more location update cost. We simulate SEEKER in terms of four metrics: the location maintenance cost, the location query cost, the query success rate, and the packet delivery rate. We also compare SEEKER with four location services - GLS, HIGH-GRADE, XYLS and GHLS. The results show that SEEKER has comparably good performances.

Service robots need to be aware of persons in their vicinity in order to interact with them. People tracking enables the robot to perceive persons by fusing the information of several sensors. Most robots rely on laser range scanners and RGB cameras for this task. The thesis focuses on the detection and tracking of heads. This allows the robot to establish eye contact, which makes interactions feel more natural. Developing a fast and reliable pose-invariant head detector is challenging. The head detector that is proposed in this thesis works well on frontal heads, but is not fully pose-invariant. This thesis further explores adaptive tracking to keep track of heads that do not face the robot. Finally, head detector and adaptive tracker are combined within a new people tracking framework and experiments show its effectiveness compared to a state-of-the-art system.

In mobile and wireless networks, data broadcasting for popular data items enables the efficient utilization of the limited wireless bandwidth. However, efficient data scheduling schemes are needed to fully exploit the benefits of data broadcasting. Towards this goal, several broadcast scheduling policies have been proposed. These existing schemes have mostly focused on either minimizing response time, or drop rate, when requests are associated with hard deadlines. The inherent inaccuracy of hard deadlines in a dynamic mobile environment motivated us to use Service Level Agreements (SLAs) where a user specifies the utility of data as a function of its arrival time. Moreover, SLAs provide the mobile user with an already familiar quality of service specification from wired environments. Hence, in this dissertation, we propose SAAB, an SLA-aware adaptive data broadcast scheduling policy for maximizing the system utility under SLA-based performance measures. To achieve this goal, SAAB considers both the characteristics of disseminated data objects as well as the SLAs associated with them. Additionally, SAAB automatically adjusts to the system workload conditions which enables it to constantly outperform existing broadcast scheduling policies.

Due to the highly-varying wireless channels over time, frequency, and space domains, statistical QoS provisioning, instead of deterministic QoS guarantees, has become a recognized feature in the next-generation wireless networks. In this dissertation, we study the adaptive wireless resource allocation problems for statistical QoS provisioning, such as guaranteeing the specified delay-bound violation probability, upper-bounding the average loss-rate, optimizing the average goodput/throughput, etc., in several typical types of mobile wireless networks. In the first part of this dissertation, we study the statistical QoS provisioning for mobile multicast through the adaptive resource allocations, where different multicast receivers attempt to receive the common messages from a single base-station sender over broadcast fading channels. Because of the heterogeneous fading across different multicast receivers, both instantaneously and statistically, how to design the efficient adaptive rate control and resource allocation for wireless multicast is a widely cited open problem. We first study the time-sharing based goodput-optimization problem for non-realtime multicast services. Then, to more comprehensively characterize the QoS provisioning problems for mobile multicast with diverse QoS requirements, we further integrate the statistical delay-QoS control techniques — effective capacity theory, statistical loss-rate control, and information theory to propose a QoS-driven optimization framework. Applying this framework and solving for the corresponding optimization problem, we identify the optimal tradeoff among statistical delay-QoS requirements, sustainable traffic load, and the average loss rate through the adaptive resource allocations and queue management. Furthermore, we study the adaptive resource allocation problems for multi-layer video multicast to satisfy diverse statistical delay and loss QoS requirements over different video layers. In addition, we derive the efficient adaptive erasure-correction coding scheme for the packet-level multicast, where the erasure-correction code is dynamically constructed based on multicast receivers’ packet-loss statuses, to achieve high error-control efficiency in mobile multicast networks. In the second part of this dissertation, we design the adaptive resource allocation schemes for QoS provisioning in unicast based wireless networks, with emphasis on statistical delay-QoS guarantees. First, we develop the QoS-driven time-slot and power allocation schemes for multi-user downlink transmissions (with independent messages) in cellular networks to maximize the delay-QoS-constrained sum system throughput. Second, we propose the delay-QoS-aware base-station selection schemes in distributed multiple-input-multiple-output systems. Third, we study the queueaware spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks for statistical delay-QoS provisioning. Analyses and simulations are presented to show the advantages of our proposed schemes and the impact of delay-QoS requirements on adaptive resource allocations in various environments.