During the last decade, the data rates provided by mobile networks have improved to the point that it is now feasible to provide richer services, such as streaming multimedia, to mobile users. However, due to factors such as radio interference and cell load, the throughput available to a client varies over time. If the throughput available to a client decreases below the media’s bit rate, the client’s buffer will eventually become empty. This causes the client to enter a period of rebuffering, which degrades user experience. In order to avoid this, a streaming server may provide the media at different bit rates, thereby allowing the media’s bit rate (and quality) to be modified to fit the client’s bandwidth. This is referred to as adaptive streaming. The aim of this thesis is to devise an algorithm to find the media quality most suitable for a specific client, focusing on how to detect that the user is able to receive content at a higher rate. The goal for such an algorithm is to avoid depleting the client buffer, while utilizing as much of the bandwidth available as possible without overflowing the buffers in the network. In particular, this thesis looks into the difficult problem of how to do adaptation for live content and how to switch to a content version with higher bitrate and quality in an optimal way. This thesis examines if existing adaptation mechanisms can be improved by considering the characteristics of different mobile networks. In order to achieve this, a study of mobile networks currently in use has been conducted, as well as experiments with streaming over live networks. The experiments and study indicate that the increased available throughput can not be detected by passive monitoring of client feedback. Furthermore, a higher data rate carrier will not be allocated to a client in 3G networks, unless the client is sufficiently utilizing the current carrier. This means that a streaming server must modify its sending rate in order to find its maximum throughput and to force allocation of a higher data rate carrier. Different methods for achieving this are examined and discussed and an algorithm based upon these ideas was implemented and evaluated. It is shown that increasing the transmission rate by introducing stuffed packets in the media stream allows the server to find the optimal bit rate for live video streams without switching up to a bit rate which the network can not support. This thesis was carried out during the summer and autumn of 2008 at Ericsson Research, Multimedia Technologies in Kista, Sweden. / Under det senaste decenniet har överföringshastigheterna i mobilnätet ökat så pass mycket att detnu är möjligt att erbjuda användarna mer avancerade tjänster, som till exempel strömmandemultimedia. I mobilnäten varierar dock klientens bandbredd med avseende på tiden på grund avfaktorer som störningar på radiolänken och lasten i cellen. Om en klients överföringshastighetsjunker till mindre än mediets bithastighet, kommer klientens buffert till slut att bli tom. Dettaleder till att klienten inleder en period av ombuffring, vilket försämrar användarupplevelsen. Föratt undvika detta kan en strömmande server erbjuda mediet i flera olika bithastigheter, vilket gördet möjligt för servern att anpassa bithastigheten (och därmed kvalitén) till klientens bandbredd.Denna metod kallas för adaptive strömning. Syftet för detta examensarbete är att utveckla en algoritm, som hittar den bithastighet som är bästlämpad för en specifik användare med fokus på att upptäcka att en klient kan ta emot media avhögre kvalité. Målet för en sådan algoritm är att undvika att klientens buffert blir tom ochsamtidigt utnyttja så mycket av bandbredden som möjligt utan att fylla nätverksbuffertarna. Merspecifikt undersöker denna rapport det svåra problemet med hur adaptering för direktsänd mediakan utföras. Examensarbetet undersöker om existerande adapteringsmekanismer kan förbättras genom attbeakta de olika radioteknologiers egenskaper. I detta arbete ingår både en studie avradioteknologier, som för tillfället används kommersiellt, samt experiment med strömmandemedia över dessa. Resultaten från studien och experimenten tyder på att ökad bandbredd inte kanupptäckas genom att passivt övervaka ”feedback” från klienten. Vidare kommer inte användarenatt allokeras en radiobärare med högre överföringshastighet i 3G-nätverk, om inte den nuvarandebäraren utnyttjas maximalt. Detta innebär att en strömmande server måste variera sinsändningshastighet både för att upptäcka om mer bandbredd är tillgänglig och för att framtvingaallokering av en bärare med högre hastighet. Olika metoder för att utföra detta undersöks ochdiskuteras och en algoritm baserad på dessa idéer utvecklas. Detta examensarbete utfördes under sommaren och hösten 2008 vid Ericsson Research,Multimedia Technologies i Kista, Sverige.

As more and more wireless applications/services emerge in the market, the already heavily crowded radio spectrum becomes much scarcer. Meanwhile, however,as it is reported in the recent literature, there is a large amount of radio spectrum that is under-utilized. This motivates the concept of cognitive radio wireless networks that allow the unlicensed secondary-users (SUs) to dynamically use the vacant radio spectrum which is not being used by the licensed primary-users (PUs). In this dissertation, we investigate protocol design for both the synchronous and asynchronous cognitive radio networks with emphasis on the medium access control (MAC) layer. We propose various spectrum sharing schemes, opportunistic packet scheduling schemes, and spectrum sensing schemes in the MAC and physical (PHY) layers for different types of cognitive radio networks, allowing the SUs to opportunistically utilize the licensed spectrum while confining the level of interference to the range the PUs can tolerate. First, we propose the cross-layer based multi-channel MAC protocol, which integrates the cooperative spectrum sensing at PHY layer and the interweave-based spectrum access at MAC layer, for the synchronous cognitive radio networks. Second, we propose the channel-hopping based single-transceiver MAC protocol for the hardware-constrained synchronous cognitive radio networks, under which the SUs can identify and exploit the vacant channels by dynamically switching across the licensed channels with their distinct channel-hopping sequences. Third, we propose the opportunistic multi-channel MAC protocol with the two-threshold sequential spectrum sensing algorithm for asynchronous cognitive radio networks. Fourth, by combining the interweave and underlay spectrum sharing modes, we propose the adaptive spectrum sharing scheme for code division multiple access (CDMA) based cognitive MAC in the uplink communications over the asynchronous cognitive radio networks, where the PUs may have different types of channel usage patterns. Finally, we develop a packet scheduling scheme for the PU MAC protocol in the context of time division multiple access (TDMA)-based cognitive radio wireless networks, which is designed to operate friendly towards the SUs in terms of the vacant-channel probability. We also develop various analytical models, including the Markov chain models, M=GY =1 queuing models, cross-layer optimization models, etc., to rigorously analyze the performance of our proposed MAC protocols in terms of aggregate throughput, access delay, and packet drop rate for both the saturation network case and non-saturation network case. In addition, we conducted extensive simulations to validate our analytical models and evaluate our proposed MAC protocols/schemes. Both the numerical and simulation results show that our proposed MAC protocols/schemes can significantly improve the spectrum utilization efficiency of wireless networks.