An unprecedented era of “connected vehicles” is becoming an imminent reality. This is driven by advances in vehicular communications, and the development of in-vehicle telematics systems supporting a plethora of applications. The diversity and multitude of such developments will, however, introduce excessive congestion across wireless infrastructure, compelling operators to expand their networks. An alternative to network expansions is to develop more efficient content delivery paradigms. In particular, alleviating Radio Access Network (RAN) congestion is important to operators as it postpones costly investments in radio equipment installations and new spectrum. Efficient RAN frameworks are therefore paramount to expediting this realm of vehicular connectivity. Fortunately, the predictability of human mobility patterns, particularly that of vehicles traversing road networks, offers unique opportunities to pursue proactive RAN transmission schemes. Knowing the routes vehicles are going to traverse enables the network to forecast spatio-temporal demands and predict service outages that specific users may face. This can be accomplished by coupling the mobility trajectories with network coverage maps to provide estimates of the future rates users will encounter along a trip. In this thesis, we investigate how this valuable contextual information can enable RANs to improve both service quality and operational efficiency. We develop a collection of methods that leverage mobility predictions to jointly optimize 1) long-term wireless resource allocation, 2) adaptive video streaming delivery, and 3) energy efficiency in RANs. Extensive simulation results indicate that our approaches provide significant user experience gains in addition to large energy savings. We emphasize the applicability of such predictive RAN mechanisms to video streaming delivery, as it is the predominant source of traffic in mobile networks, with projections of further growth. Although we focus on exploiting mobility information at the radio access level, our framework is a direction towards pursuing a predictive end-to-end content delivery architecture. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2014-04-30 06:15:34.31

With the increasing demand of video applications in wireless networks, how to better support video transmission over wireless networks has drawn much attention to the research community. Time-varying and error-prone nature of wireless channel makes video transmission in wireless networks a challenging task to provide the users with satisfactory watching experience. For different video applications, we choose different video coding techniques accordingly. E.g., for Internet video streaming, we choose standardized H.264 video codec; for video transmission in sensor networks or multicast, we choose simple and energy-conserving video coding technique based on compressive sensing. Thus, the challenges for different video transmission applications are different. Therefore, This dissertation tackles video transmission problem in three different applications. First, for dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH), we investigate the streaming strategy. Specifically, we focus on the rate adaptation algorithm for streaming scalable video (H.264/SVC) in wireless networks. We model the rate adaptation problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP), aiming to find an optimal streaming strategy in terms of user-perceived quality of experience (QoE) such as playback interruption, average playback quality and playback smoothness. We then obtain the optimal MDP solution using dynamic programming. However, the optimal solution requires the knowledge of the available bandwidth statistics and has a large number of states, which makes it difficult to obtain the optimal solution in real time. Therefore, we further propose an online algorithm which integrates the learning and planning process. The proposed online algorithm collects bandwidth statistics and makes streaming decisions in real time. A reward parameter has been defined in our proposed streaming strategy, which can be adjusted to make a good trade-off between the average playback quality and playback smoothness.We also use a simple testbed to validate our proposed algorithm. Second, for video transmission in wireless sensor networks, we consider a wireless sensor node monitoring the environment and it is equipped with a compressive-sensing based, single-pixel image camera and other sensors such as temperature and humidity sensors. The wireless node needs to send the data out in a timely and energy efficient way. This transmission control problem is challenging in that we need to jointly consider perceived video quality, quality variation, power consumption and transmission delay requirements, and the wireless channel uncertainty. We address the above issues by first building a rate-distortion model for compressive sensing video. Then we formulate the deterministic and stochastic optimization problems and design the transmission control algorithm which jointly performs rate control, scheduling and power control. Third, we propose a low-complex, scalable video coding architecture based on compressive sensing (SVCCS) for wireless unicast and multicast transmissions. SVCCS achieves good scalability, error resilience and coding efficiency. SVCCS encoded bitstream is divided into base and enhancement layers. The layered structure provides quality and temporal scalability. While in the enhancement layer, the CS measurements provide fine granular quality scalability. We also investigate the rate allocation problem for multicasting SVCCS encoded bitstream to a group of receivers with heterogeneous channel conditions. Specifically, we study how to allocate rate between the base and enhancement layer to improve the overall perceived video quality for all the receivers. / Graduate / 0984 / siyxiang@ece.uvic.ca

Fourth Generation (4G) cellular technology Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) offers high data rate capabilities to mobile users; and, operators are trying to deliver a true mobile broadband experience over LTE networks. Mobile TV and Video on Demand (VoD) are expected to be the main revenue generators in the near future [36] and efficient video streaming over wireless is the key to enabling this. 3GPP recommends the use of H.264 baseline profiles for all video based services in Third Generation (3G) Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) networks. However, LTE networks need to support mobile devices with different display resolution requirements like small resolution mobile phones and high resolution laptops. Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is required to achieve this goal. Feasibility study of SVC for LTE is one of the main agenda of 3GPP Release10. SVC enhances H.264 with a set of new profiles and encoding tools that may be used to produce scalable bit streams. Efficient adaptation methods for SVC video transmission over LTE networks are proposed in this thesis. Advantages of SVC over H.264 are analyzed using real time use cases of mobile video streaming. Further, we study the cross layer adaptation and scheduling schemes for delivering SVC video streams most efficiently to the users in LTE networks in unicast and multicast transmissions. We propose SVC based video streaming scheme for unicast and multicast transmissions in the downlink direction, with dynamic adaptations and a scheduling scheme based on channel quality information from users. Simulation results indicate improved video quality for more number of users in the coverage area and efficient spectrum usage with the proposed methods.

By equipping vehicles with the on-board wireless facility, the newly emerged vehicular networking targets to provision the broadband serves to vehicles. As such, a variety of novel and exciting applications can be provided to vehicular users to enhance their road safety and travel comfort, and finally raise a complete change to their on-road life. As the content distribution and media/video streaming, such as Youtube, Netflix, nowadays have become the most popular Internet applications, to enable the efficient content distribution and audio/video streaming services is thus of the paramount importance to the success of the vehicular networking. This, however, is fraught with fundamental challenges due to the distinguished natures of vehicular networking. On one hand, the vehicular communication is challenged by the spotty and volatile wireless connections caused by the high mobility of vehicles. This makes the download performance of connections very unstable and dramatically change over time, which directly threats to the on-top media applications. On the other hand, a vehicular network typically involves an extremely large-scale node population (e.g., hundreds or thousandths of vehicles in a region) with intense spatial and temporal variations across the network geometry at different times. This dictates any designs to be scalable and fully distributed which should not only be resilient to the network dynamics, but also provide the guaranteed quality-of-service (QoS) to users. The purpose of this dissertation is to address the challenges of the vehicular networking imposed by its intrinsic dynamic and large-scale natures, and build the efficient, scalable and, more importantly, practical systems to enable the cost-effective and QoS guaranteed content distribution and media streaming services to vehicular users. Note that to effective- ly deliver the content from the remote Internet to in-motion vehicles, it typically involves three parts as: 1.) an infrastructure grid of gateways which behave as the data depots or injection points of Internet contents and services to vehicles, 2.) protocol at gateways which schedules the bandwidth resource at gateways and coordinates the parallel transmissions to different vehicles, and 3.) the end-system control mechanism at receivers which adapts the receiver’s content download/playback strategy based on the available network throughput to provide users with the desired service experience. With above three parts in mind, the entire research work in this dissertation casts a systematic view to address each part in one topic with: 1.) design of large-scale cost-effective content distribution infrastructure, 2.) MAC (media access control) performance evaluation and channel time scheduling, and 3.) receiver adaptation and adaptive playout in dynamic download environment. In specific, in the first topic, we propose a practical solution to form a large-scale and cost-effective content distribution infrastructure in the city. We argue that a large-scale infrastructure with the dedicated resources, including storage, computing and communication capacity, is necessary for the vehicular network to become an alternative of 3G/4G cellular network as the dominating approach of ubiquitous content distribution and data services to vehicles. On addressing this issue, we propose a fully distributed scheme to form a large-scale infrastructure by the contributions of individual entities in the city, such as grocery stores, movie theaters, etc. That is to say, the installation and maintenance costs are shared by many individuals. In this topic, we explain the design rationale on how to motivate individuals to contribute, and specify the detailed design of the system, which is embodied with distributed protocols and performance evaluation. The second topic investigates on the MAC throughput performance of the vehicle-to- infrastructure (V2I) communications when vehicles drive through RSUs, namely drive-thru Internet. Note that with a large-scale population of fast-motion nodes contending the chan- nel for transmissions, the MAC performance determines the achievable nodal throughput and is crucial to the on-top applications. In this topic, using a simple yet accurate Marko- vian model, we first show the impacts of mobility (characterized by node velocity and moving directions) on the nodal and system throughput performance, respectively. Based on this analysis, we then propose three enhancement schemes to timely adjust the MAC parameters in tune with the vehicle mobility to achieve the maximal the system throughput. The last topic investigates on the end-system design to deliver the user desired media streaming services in the vehicular environment. In specific, the vehicular communications are notoriously known for the intermittent connectivity and dramatically varying throughput. Video streaming on top of vehicular networks therefore inevitably suffers from the severe network dynamics, resulting in the frequent jerkiness or even freezing video playback. To address this issue, an analytical model is first developed to unveil the impacts of network dynamics on the resultant video performance to users in terms of video start-up delay and smoothness of playback. Based on the analysis, the adaptive playout buffer mechanism is developed to adapt the video playback strategy at receivers towards the user-defined video quality. The proposals developed in the three topics are validated with the extensive and high fidelity simulations. We believe that our analysis developed in the dissertation can provide insightful lights on understanding the fundamental performance of the vehicular content distribution networks from the aspects of session-level download performance in urban vehicular networks (topic 1), MAC throughput performance (topic 2), and user perceived media quality (topic 3). The protocols developed in the three topics, respectively, offer practical and efficient solutions to build and optimize the vehicular content distribution networks.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Yucel Altunbasak; Committee Member: Chuanyi Ji; Committee Member: Ghassan AlRegib; Committee Member: Ozlem Ergun; Committee Member: Russell M. Mersereau.

Video streaming is an important field of global communications and data processing. It is divided into server and client sides connected via network. Video streaming is concerned with delivering video data from server to client over the network as fast and with as little loss as possible. In this study the possibilities to minimize the amount of data transferred over the network in video streaming are investigated and a video streaming technique comprised of server and client sides is proposed. To expand the flexibility and adaptability of the proposed video streaming technique an operational parameter system was constructed and the parameter value ranges were defined. The proposed video streaming technique was then applied to three sample videos. Before streaming the server side of the proposed technique reduced the frame count of input videos based on operational parameter values while the client side reconstructed the skipped frames. Then the quality of the resulting videos was measured and evaluated. To evaluate the reconstructed frames and videos the PSNR measurement method was used. The study concludes that by using the proposed video streaming technique it is possible to reduce the amount of transfer data by dropping frames on the server side and reconstructing them on the client side.

In this thesis, the effect of buffer strategy on video quality has been investigated. For this purpose, a software system was developed to implement buffer strategy at sender and receiver sides. Four experiments were performed under this system and five scenarios were designed under each experiment. A subjective test of MOS was conducted for all the scenarios to collect people’s perception about three different videos. People from different background and of different age group were invited to take part in all the experiments. Three different videos were shown to each participant in order to investigate user perceived quality of video. MATLAB and MS Excel were used for data collection and plotting graphs. We conclude that people have convergence of opinions when communication break time increases than the size of buffers at both ends. Finally, the MOS ratings of this subjective test prove that by the use of same size buffers at both ends improves the user’s perceived quality of video at acceptable level. Because of empirical study, the main focus was on implementation strategy of buffers at both ends. The implementation strategy was the design of a number of scenarios in which the statistics of the behavior of sender and receiver buffers have been collected. / 0092 662 424477

In this thesis we study users' viewing motions when watching 360° videos in order to provide information that can be used to optimize future view-dependent streaming protocols. More specifically, we develop an application that plays a sequence of 360° videos on an Oculus Rift Head Mounted Display and records the orientation and rotation velocity of the headset during playback. The application is used during an extensive user study in order to collect more than 21 hours of viewing data which is then analysed to expose viewing patterns, useful for optimizing 360° streaming protocols.

Fourth Generation (4G) cellular technology Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) offers high data rate capabilities to mobile users; and, operators are trying to deliver a true mobile broadband experience over LTE networks. Mobile TV and Video on Demand (VoD) are expected to be the main revenue generators in the near future [36] and efficient video streaming over wireless is the key to enabling this. 3GPP recommends the use of H.264 baseline profiles for all video based services in Third Generation (3G) Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) networks. However, LTE networks need to support mobile devices with different display resolution requirements like small resolution mobile phones and high resolution laptops. Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is required to achieve this goal. Feasibility study of SVC for LTE is one of the main agenda of 3GPP Release10. SVC enhances H.264 with a set of new profiles and encoding tools that may be used to produce scalable bit streams. Efficient adaptation methods for SVC video transmission over LTE networks are proposed in this thesis. Advantages of SVC over H.264 are analyzed using real time use cases of mobile video streaming. Further, we study the cross layer adaptation and scheduling schemes for delivering SVC video streams most efficiently to the users in LTE networks in unicast and multicast transmissions. We propose SVC based video streaming scheme for unicast and multicast transmissions in the downlink direction, with dynamic adaptations and a scheduling scheme based on channel quality information from users. Simulation results indicate improved video quality for more number of users in the coverage area and efficient spectrum usage with the proposed methods.

This thesis explores possible solutions to replace Adobe Flash Player by using toolsalready built into modern web browsers, and explores the tradeoffs between bitrate, qual-ity, and delay when using an adaptive bitrate for live streamed video. Using an adaptivebitrate for streamed video was found to reduce stalls in playback for the client by adapt-ing to the available bandwidth. A newer codec can further compress the video file sizewhile maintaining the same video quality. This can improve the viewing experience forclients on a restricted or a congested network. The tests conducted in this thesis showthat producing an adaptive bitrate stream and changing codecs is a very CPU intensiveprocess.