Streaming multimedia content over the IP-network is poised to be the dominant Internet traffic for the coming decade, predicted to account for more than 91% of all consumer traffic in the coming years. Streaming multimedia content ranges from Internet television (IPTV), video on demand (VoD), peer-to-peer streaming, and 3D television over IP to name a few. Widespread acceptance, growth, and subscriber retention are contingent upon network providers assuring superior Quality of Experience (QoE) on top of todays Internet. This work presents the first empirical understanding of Internet’s video-QoE capabilities, and tools and protocols to efficiently infer and improve them. To infer video-QoE at arbitrary nodes in the Internet, we design and implement MintMOS: a lightweight, real-time, noreference framework for capturing perceptual quality. We demonstrate that MintMOS’s projections closely match with subjective surveys in accessing perceptual quality. We use MintMOS to characterize Internet video-QoE both at the link level and end-to-end path level. As an input to our study, we use extensive measurements from a large number of Internet paths obtained from various measurement overlays deployed using PlanetLab. Link level degradations of intra– and inter–ISP Internet links are studied to create an empirical understanding of their shortcomings and ways to overcome them. Our studies show that intra–ISP links are often poorly engineered compared to peering links, and that iii degradations are induced due to transient network load imbalance within an ISP. Initial results also indicate that overlay networks could be a promising way to avoid such ISPs in times of degradations. A large number of end-to-end Internet paths are probed and we measure delay, jitter, and loss rates. The measurement data is analyzed offline to identify ways to enable a source to select alternate paths in an overlay network to improve video-QoE, without the need for background monitoring or apriori knowledge of path characteristics. We establish that for any unstructured overlay of N nodes, it is sufficient to reroute key frames using a random subset of k nodes in the overlay, where k is bounded by O(lnN). We analyze various properties of such random subsets to derive simple, scalable, and an efficient path selection strategy that results in a k-fold increase in path options for any source-destination pair; options that consistently outperform Internet path selection. Finally, we design a prototype called source initiated frame restoration (SIFR) that employs random subsets to derive alternate paths and demonstrate its effectiveness in improving Internet video-QoE.

The rapid advances in networking technology have enabled large-scale deployments of online video streaming services in today's Internet. In particular, wireless Internet access technology has been one of the most transforming and empowering technologies in recent years. We have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of mobile users who access online video services through wireless access networks, such as wireless mesh networks and 3G cellular networks. Unlike in wired environment, using a dedicated stream for each video service request is very expensive for wireless networks. This simple strategy also has limited scalability when popular content is demanded by a large number of users. It is desirable to have a robust wireless access environment that can sustain a sudden spurt of interest for certain videos due to, say a current event. Moreover, due to the mobility of the video users, smooth streaming performance during the handoff is a key requirement to the robustness of the wireless access networks for mobile video users. In this dissertation, the author focuses on the robustness of the wireless mesh access (WMA) environment for mobile video users. Novel video sharing techniques are proposed to reduce the burden of video streaming in different WMA environments. The author proposes a cross-layer framework for scalable Video-on-Demand (VOD) service in multi-hop WiMax mesh networks. The author also studies the optimization problems for video multicast in a general wireless mesh networks. The WMA environment is modeled as a connected graph with a video source in one of the nodes and the video requests randomly generated from other nodes in the graph. The optimal video multicast problem in such environment is formulated as two sub-problems. The proposed solutions of the sub-problems are justified using simulation and numerical study. In the case of online video streaming, online video server does not cooperate with the access networks. In this case, the centralized data sharing technique fails since they assume the cooperation between the video server and the network. To tackle this problem, a novel distributed video sharing technique called Dynamic Stream Merging (DSM) is proposed. DSM improves the robustness of the WMA environment without the cooperation from the online video server. It optimizes the per link sharing performance with small time complexity and message complexity. The performance of DSM has been studied using simulations in Network Simulator 2 (NS2) as well as real experiments in a wireless mesh testbed. The Mobile YouTube website (http://m.youtube.com) is used as the online video website in the experiment. Last but not the least; a cross-layer scheme is proposed to avoid the degradation on the video quality during the handoff in the WMA environment. Novel video quality related triggers and the routing metrics at the mesh routers are utilized in the handoff decision making process. A redirection scheme is also proposed to eliminate packet loss caused by the handoff.

No description available.

No description available.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka vilka skillnader vana lyssnare beskriver att det upplever vid lyssning, mellan originalutgåva på vinyl från 60-talet och digitala remasters av samma låt, samt vilken av versionerna de föredrar. De skillnader som undersöks är fokuserat på tre tekniska fenomen. Dessa fenomen är dynamiskt omfång, frekvensspektrum och stereobredd. Frågeställningarna är vilka skillnader deltagarna i undersökningen hör mellan versionerna samt vilken version de föredrar. De teoretiska grunderna för att förstå dessa fenomen kommer från Hubers (2013) teorier om dynamiskt omfång och frekvensspektrum, samt Gibson & Curtis (2019) teorier om stereobredd. Metoden som använts för undersökningen är lyssningstest med tillhörande enkät och ett lyssningstest med fokusgruppdiskussion. I undersökningen deltog fyra personer i vardera testet. Den tidigare forskning som presenteras i uppsatsen är från Barys (2013) artikel (Re)Releasing The Beatles där han undersöker fyra låtar och de skillnader som finns mellan vinylversioner från 60-talet och digitala remasters från 2009. I artikeln framgår det att det finns tydliga skillnader mellan versionerna och att den största förklaringen till dessa skillnader var på grund av hur de hade bearbetats på olika sätt. Undersökningens resultat visar att undersökningsdeltagarna uppfattade skillnader mellan versionerna. De största skillnaderna fanns i frekvensspektrumet där deltagarna beskrev de upplevde frekvenserna som motsatser i vinylversionen jämförelsevis med den digitala remastern. Deltagarna upplevde även stora skillnader i det dynamiska omfånget mellan versionerna. Gällande skillnaderna i stereobredden gav undersökningen inga tydliga resultat då deltagarna inte kunde avgöra några större skillnader. Vilken versionen som deltagarna föredrog var väldigt blandad. För några av låtarna i undersökningen så föredrog de den digitala versionen och i några fall originalutgåvan på vinyl. Uppsatsen främsta bidrag till forskningen är den ökade förståelsen för vilken åsikt personer, runt 20 årsåldern på 2020-talet, med god kunskap inom musikproduktion har kring fenomenen vinyl och digital remaster.

The skills enhancement when English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students are acquiring the language has been recently affected by the rapid spread of broadband Internet. More particularly since the appearance of Original Version (OV) video streaming, as it is now available for many English language teachers and students that take advantage of this verbal medium, which provides new opportunities for education and culture. In the present work, we have investigated, through empirical research, the transition from CEFR B1, through B2, towards C1 of different EFL students that have proved how unadapted captioned videos can affect the way they eventually perform when: (1) Gist understanding is evaluated by means of leaving the captions on (B1 students in Study 1). (2) The learners’ listening skills enhancement varies if they are in the habit of watching OV on a regular basis (B1-B2 students in Study 2), and (3) There is an observation of how advanced students (C1 students in Study 3) reading and listening skills improve depending on their level of voluntary exposure to OV videos in the long-term. Results lead us to conclude that the B2 level is the tipping point for students to really enjoy and take advantage of real video streaming TV shows in English as lower levels showed inconsistencies in results amongst them. Complementarily, C1 students that have been independently watching OV TV programmes on a regular basis, showed better outcomes in the listening comprehension tests than those who did not. Nevertheless, the reading comprehension results showed no difference between the two groups.

Energy consumption and correlated greenhouse gas emissions are a big global problem. It affects all parts of society, and each industrial sector must work toward reducing itscarbon footprint. This thesis details the research of different methods to model the energyconsumption of video streaming, and works towards creating a final model. The videostreaming process is broken down into a core process consisting of head-end, distribution,transmission, and terminals. The process that contributes the most to energy consumptionat the head-end is found to be video encoding. This thesis explores the energy consumption of video encoding in depth and how it is affected by parameters such as hardware,codec choice, codec preset selection, and video details such as resolution, framerate, andduration, but these parameters are found to be insufficient to accurately model the energyconsumption of video encoding. In distribution and transmission, the highest contributor is found to be content delivery networks. The energy consumption of content deliverynetworks is investigated however no appropriate model is found. For terminals, the mostimportant factor is the kind of terminal used. The energy consumption of televisions, desktop computers, laptops, and mobile terminals is investigated, and models are presented foreach. The thesis also discusses the different models, their advantages, and their shortcomings. Additionally, an application to visualize features of the model is presented.

No / With the rapid growth of the scale, complexity, and heterogeneity of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems, it has become a great challenge to deal with the peer's network-oblivious traffic and self-organization problems. A potential solution is to deploy servers in appropriate locations. However, due to the unique features and requirements of P2P systems, the traditional placement models cannot yield the desirable service performance. To fill this gap, we propose an efficient server placement model for P2P live streaming systems. Compared to the existing solutions, this model takes the Internet Service Provider (ISP) friendly problem into account and can reduce the cross-network traffic among ISPs. Specifically, we introduce the peers' contribution into the proposed model, which makes it more suitable for P2P live streaming systems. Moreover, we deploy servers based on the theoretical solution subject to practical data and apply them to practical live streaming applications. The experimental results show that this new model can reduce the amount of cross-network traffic and improve the system efficiency, has a better adaptability to Internet environment, and is more suitable for P2P systems than the traditional placement models.

In the recent decade, peer-to-peer (P2P) technology has greatly enhanced the scalability of multimedia streaming on the Internet by enabling efficient cooperation among end-users. However, existing streaming applications are plagued by the problems of long playback latency and long churn-induced delays. First of all, many streaming applications, such as IPTV and video conferencing, have rigorous constraints on end-to-end delays. Moreover, churn-induced delays, including delays from channel switching and streaming recovery, in current P2P streaming applications are typically in the scale of 10-60 seconds, which is far below the favorable user experience as in cable TV systems. These two issues in terms of playback latency and churn-induced delays have hindered the extensive commercial deployment of P2P systems. Motivated by this, in this dissertation, we focus on reducing delays in P2P live streaming systems. Specifically, we propose solutions for reducing delays in P2P live streaming systems in four problem spaces: (1) minimizing the maximum end-to-end delay in P2P streaming; (2) minimizing the average end-to-end delay in P2P streaming; (3) minimizing the average delay in multi-channel P2P streaming; and (4) reducing churn-induced delays. We devise a streaming scheme to minimize the maximum end-to-end streaming delay under a mesh-based overlay network paradigm. We call this problem, the MDPS problem. We formulate the MDPS problem and prove its NP-completeness. We then present a polynomial-time approximation algorithm, called Fastream-I, for this problem, and show that the performance of Fastream-I is bounded by a ratio of O(SQRT(log n)), where n is the number of peers in the system. We also develop a distributed version of Fastream-I that can adapt to network dynamics. Our simulation study reveals the effectiveness of Fastream-I, and shows a reasonable message overhead. While Fastream-I yields the minimum maximum end-to-end streaming delay (within a factor of O(SQRT(log n)), in many P2P settings, users may desire the minimum average end-to-end P2P streaming delay. Towards this, we devise a streaming scheme which optimizes the bandwidth allocation to achieve the minimum average end-to-end P2P streaming delay. We call this problem, the MADPS problem. We first develop a generic analytical framework for the MADPS problem. We then present Fastream-II as a solution to the MADPS problem. The core part of Fastream-II is a fast approximation algorithm, called APX-Fastream-II, based on primal-dual schema. We prove that the performance of APX-Fastream-II is bounded by a ratio of 1+w, where w is an adjustable input parameter. Furthermore, we show that the flexibility of w provides a trade-off between the approximation factor and the running time of Fastream-II. The third problem space of the dissertation is minimizing the average delay in multi-channel P2P streaming systems. Toward this, we present an algorithm, called Fastream-III. To reduce the influence from frequent channel-switching behavior, we build Fastream-III for the view-upload decoupling (VUD) model, where the uploaded content from a serving node is independent of the channel it views. We devise an approximation algorithm based on primal-dual schema for the critical component of Fastream-III, called APX-Fastream-III. In contrast to APX-Fastream-II, APX-Fastream-III addresses the extra complexity in the multichannel scenario and maintains the approximation bound by a ratio of 1+w. Besides playback lag, delays occurring in P2P streaming may arise from two other factors: node churn and channel switching. Since both stem from the re-connecting request in churn, we call them churn-induced delays. Optimizing churn-induced delays is the dissertation's fourth problem space. Toward this, we propose NAP, a novel agent-based P2P scheme, that provides preventive connections to all channels. Each channel in NAP selects powerful peers as agents to represent the peers in the channel to minimize control and message overheads. Agents distill the bootstrapping peers with superior bandwidth and lifetime expectation to quickly serve the viewer in the initial period of streaming. We build a queueing theory model to analyze NAP. Based on this model, we numerically compare NAP's performance with past efforts. The results of the numerical analysis reveal the effectiveness of NAP. / Ph. D.

The phasor measurement unit (PMU) is considered to be one of the most important measuring devices in the future of power systems. The distinction comes from its unique ability to provide synchronized phasor measurements of voltages and currents from widely dispersed locations in an electric power grid. The commercialization of the global positioning satellite (GPS) with accuracy of timing pulses in the order of 1 microsecond made possible the commercial production of phasor measurement units. Simulations and field experiences suggest that PMUs can revolutionize the way power systems are monitored and controlled. However, it is perceived that costs and communication links will affect the number of PMUs to be installed in any power system. Furthermore, defining the appropriate PMU system application is a utility problem that must be resolved. This thesis will address two key issues in any PMU initiative: placement and system applications. A novel method of PMU placement based on incomplete observability using graph theoretic approach is proposed. The objective is to reduce the required number of PMUs by intentionally creating widely dispersed pockets of unobserved buses in the network. Observable buses enveloped such pockets of unobserved regions thus enabling the interpolation of the unknown voltages. The concept of depth of unobservability is introduced. It is a general measure of the physical distance of unobserved buses from those known. The effects of depth of unobservability on the number of PMU placements and the errors in the estimation of unobserved buses will be shown. The extent and location of communication facilities affects the required number and optimal placement of PMUs. The pragmatic problem of restricting PMU placement only on buses with communication facilities is solved using the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. SA energy functions are developed so as to minimize the deviation of communication-constrained placement from the ideal strategy as determined by the graph theoretic algorithm. A technique for true real time monitoring of voltage security using synchronized phasor measurements and decision trees is presented as a promising system application. The relationship of widening bus voltage angle separation with network stress is exploited and its connection to voltage security and margin to voltage collapse established. Decision trees utilizing angle difference attributes are utilized to classify the network voltage security status. It will be shown that with judicious PMU placement, the PMU angle measurement is equally a reliable indicator of voltage security class as generator var production. A method of enhancing the weighted least square state estimator (WLS-SE) with PMU measurements using a non-invasive approach is presented. Here, PMU data is not directly inputted to the WLS estimator measurement set. A separate linear state estimator model utilizing the state estimate from WLS, as well as PMU voltage and current measurement is shown to enhance the state estimate. Finally, the mathematical model for a streaming state estimation will be presented. The model is especially designed for systems that are not completely observable by PMUs. Basically, it is proposed to estimate the voltages of unobservable buses from the voltages of those observable using interpolation. The interpolation coefficients (or the linear state estimators, LSE) will be calculated from a base case operating point. Then, these coefficients will be periodically updated using their sensitivities to the unobserved bus injections. It is proposed to utilize the state from the traditional WLS estimator to calculate the injections needed to update the coefficients. The resulting hybrid estimator is capable of producing a streaming state of the power system. Test results show that with the hybrid estimator, a significant improvement in the estimation of unobserved bus voltages as well as power flows on unobserved lines is achieved. / Ph. D.