Quality of Service for In-Home Digital Networks
(PROGRESS project EES.5653)
Introduction
The
project is focused on the problems surrounding resource sharing in networks of consumer
devices, more precisely, of connected real-time embedded systems. We regard
these networks as contained domains, meaning that their use is under
complete control of its owner. The considered systems are resource constrained
since the difference between worst-case and average-case performance is too
large to be able to afford over-dimensioning. In addition, resources cannot
always be guaranteed as is the case, for example, in wireless networks. The
shared resources in our project concern the network, the processing power in
terminals and network devices and the memory in these. The domain we study is
the domain of networked video, since this represents currently the largest
challenge. Because this system must cope with overload situations, it must be
possible to adjust the quality in order to avoid failure. The project addresses
this graceful quality adaptation by
Three
PhD students are working on the project, two are funded by STW and 1 is funded
by TU/e.
·
Dmitri Jarnikov works on scalable video
(TU/e, from
·
Sergei Kozlov addresses QoS aware
transport protocols (STW, from
·
Alina Albu works on
prediction of resource requirements of streaming applications (STW, from
The
project is supervised by dr. J.J. Lukkien
and dr. P.D.V.van der Stok; promotor and project
responsible is prof.dr.E.H.L.Aarts.
First, taking as a start the ITU-T Recommendation E.800 –
Geneva 1994 as the definition of Quality of Service:
Quality of Service: “... is the
collective effect of service performances, which determine the degree of
satisfaction for a user of a service”
we observe that QoS is then dependent on all
system parts. It plays at different timescales and at different layers of the
system. Clearly, these different timescales lead to different problems and
solutions. For example, rapid bandwidth changes in the millisecond range cannot
be solved by system-wide reallocation in the second range. Conversely,
structural and long-lasting load changes should not just rely on algorithms and
protocols that solve quick bandwidth variations.
Second, we think that convergence towards
optimal use is in some cases better than end-to-end guarantees. Internally, the
system may use strict resource assignment and enforcement. However, unforeseen
external circumstances as well as fluctuations in actual resource requirements
must be dealt with such that the resulting behavior converges again to optimal
use. This calls for adaptibility which, because of the first point, plays at
several layers.
We can demonstrate these issues with the
simple example of a video source (encoding component) transmitting to an access
point (which does transcoding) and connects through some channel to a terminal
that will do decoding. We can have the following changes that the system needs
to respond to:
•
Variations in terminal load
–
competitive applications, additional
streams to encode/decode.
–
variations in computational
effort in codec dependent on the video.
•
Variations in available
bandwidth, e.g. high, bursty loss in wireless networks
The effect of these variations are that the
application (or a part of it) does not get the resources it needs. Sometimes,
system software does not deal with this very well. For example, some transport
protocols are very sensitive to bursty loss, hence, more suitable protocols
should be developed. For the rest, the response to this situation is
essentially found in making the application adaptive. This can be done at
several places in the chain, viz. at the transport layer, at the
encoding/decoding terminals and perhaps in a combination of the two. Tradeoffs
could be made between transmitting less information at the expense of more
calculation etc. In order to deal with structural load changes a control
structure must be able to estimate the new situation and perform admission
tests. To that end, good predictive models of the application are needed.
Current work and plans
Our
current work addresses the following questions:
·
Scalable Video. We look at the issue of changing the quality of the
transferred video based on quality variations of the network and variations in
processing capacity. Particularly, we address layered video using SNR
scalabilty. We develop a feedback-control loop in order to optimize the
behavior.
·
Adaptive transport protocols. Quick variations in network quality should
be tackled by the transport protocol. We look at selective and adaptive
retransmission strategies and at smart frame-dropping.
·
Predicting resource requirements. When a set of components is activated
on a particular node their resource consumption should be known.
Demonstrator
There
are regular demonstrations of the achievements in the involved groups, viz.,
SAN at TU/e and OASIS at Philips Research. There have been cooperations
with product divisions in Philips resulting in more robust demonstrators and
validation of methods. A demonstration has been given on the IST event of the
European Union in the week of
For
the project we aim at a combined demonstrator according to the following
picture.
By extending to multiple streams we can increase the
challenge on the control structure to include admission control.
Meetings, contacts and conference visits
·
Weekly meetings on Friday both
with the SAN group (the weekly colloquium series) as well as with staff members
for supervision purposes.
·
Usergroup meeting on May 28, 2004.
·
Posters on the Progress workshop of October 2003 (best poster
presentation) and October 2004.
·
prof. dr. Gerhard Fohler is a regular visitor advising on real-time
issues.
·
dr. Kurt Wallnau from Carnegie Mellon (SEI) was visiting TU/e in October
2004; discussions of Alina with his staff have started.
·
Presence at the EU/IST conference on November 15-17, 2004.
Relevant output so far
PROGRESS meetings
·
First progress report in October 2003
·
Review on
1. Second progress report in
May 2004
2. Agenda and slides from the meeting on
28-5-2004.
6. Minutes
·
Review on
1.
Third progress report in
November 2004
2.
Agenda and slides from the meeting on
10-12-2004
6.
Minutes
·
Review on
September 30, 2005
1. Fourth progress report in September 2005
2.
Agenda and slides from the meeting on
30-09-2005
4.
Sergei’s
presentation
5.
Dmitri’s presentation
6.
Minutes
·
Review on
October 11, 2006
1. Fifth progress report in October 2006
2.
Agenda meeting on 11-10-2006
2.
Dmitri’s
presentation
Posters and
presentations
·
Poster: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, P.D.V.
v.d. Stok, "Towards A Characterization of Real-Time Streaming
Systems", ECRTS WIP 2005
·
Poster: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d.
Stok, "Towards A Characterization of Real-Time Streaming Systems",
SEES Workshop 2005
·
Poster: S. Kozlov, Peter v.d. Stok, Johan
Lukkien, IFD – a technique for improving the quality of wireless video
streaming, SEES Workshop 2005
·
Poster: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien,
P.D.V. v.d. Stok; Analysis of a Time-Driven Chain of Dependent Components;
ECRTS 2006 WIP,
·
Presentations
by Alina on
QoS papers:
1.
Prediction-based policy adaptation for QoS management in
wireless networks - 23.10.2003
2.
Cooperative Run-Time Management of Adaptive Applications
and Distributed Resources. - 7.11.2003
3.
An Architecture for QoS guarrantees and routing
wireless/mobile networks. - 03.12.2003
·
Presentation by Sergei: TCP-FCW –
transport protocol for real-time transmissions on high-loss networks, at
Philips Research on 23-2-2004.
·
Presentation by Alina: Overview of NCS
calculation method, at SAN meeting on 12-11-2004
·
Presentation by Alina: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d. Stok,
"Towards A Characterization of Real-Time Streaming Systems", ECRTS
WIP 2005
·
Presentation by Alina: M.A.
Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d. Stok; On A Theory of Media Processing
Systems Behaviour, with Applications; ECRTS 2006,
·
Presentation by Alina: M.A.
Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d. Stok; Analysis of a Time-Driven Chain
of Dependent Components; ECRTS 2006 WIP,
Publications and
reports
·
Paper: Dmitri Jarnikov, Peter van der Stok,
Clemens C. Wust, Predictive Control of Video Quality under Fluctuating
Bandwidth Conditions. Published at ICME2004.
·
Paper: Dmitri Jarnikov, Peter van der Stok,
Johan Lukkien, Timely wireless streaming based on a scalability scheme using
legacy MPEG2 decoders. Presented
IASTED IMSA 2005, Hawaii
·
Draft report:
M.A. Weffers-Albu, P.v.d.Stok, J.J. Lukkien, "Quality of Service
Overview"
·
Report: H. de Groot (editor), I. Nitescu,
I.C. Kang, D. Jarnikov, P. D.V. van der Stok, Robust scalable video over
wireless networks (KISS demonstrator). PR-TN-2004/00160 (Philips
Restricted)
·
Report P.D.V. van der Stok, D. Jarnikov,
·
Book chapter Jeffrey
Kang, Harmke de Groot, Peter van der Stok, Dmitri Jarnikov, Iulian Nitescu, and
Felix Ogg, Robust video streaming over wireless in-home networks, in Dynamic
and Robust Streaming in and between Connected Consumer-Electronic Devices,
Peter van der Stok editor, pp 193-212, Kluwer, 2005.
·
Book chapter Reinder
Haakma, Dmitri Jarnikov, and Peter van der Stok, Perceived quality of
wirelessly transported videos, in Dynamic and Robust Streaming in
and between Connected Consumer-Electronic Devices, Peter van der Stok editor,
pp 213-239, Kluwer, 2005.
·
Paper: Dmitri
Jarnikov, Johan Lukkien, Peter van der Stok, A Framework for Video Streaming to Resource-Constrained Terminals,
accepted for publication at EUC2005
·
Paper: Dmitri
Jarnikov, Johan Lukkien, Peter van der Stok, Adaptable video streaming over wireless networks, accepted for
publication at ICCCN2005
·
Paper: Dmitri
Jarnikov, Peter van der Stok, Johan Lukkien, Influence of network awareness on perceived video quality,
published at RM4NES workshop
· Paper: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, E.F.M. Steffens, P.D.V. van der Stok, On Theory of Media Processing Systems Behavior, with Applications, accepted at ECRTS 2006
·
Paper: M.A.
Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d. Stok, "A Characterization of
Streaming Applications Execution", Proceedings RM4NES 2005,
·
Paper: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien,
P.D.V. v.d. Stok, "Towards A Characterization of Real-Time Streaming
Systems", ECRTS WIP 2005, Palma de Mallorca
·
Paper: M.A. Weffers-Albu, P.v.d.Stok, J.J. Lukkien, "NCS
Calculation Method for Streaming Applications", Proceedings of the 5th
PROGRESS Symposium on Embedded Systems.
·
Paper: S. Kozlov, P.v.d. Stok, J.J. Lukkien, Adaptive scheduling of MPEG video frames during
real-time wireless video streaming, Proceedings WoWMoM2005, Cecily
·
Paper: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J.
Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d. Stok; On A Theory of Media Processing Systems Behaviour,
with Applications; ECRTS 2006,
·
Paper: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J.
Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d. Stok; Analysis of a Time-Driven Chain of Dependent
Components; ECRTS 2006 WIP,
·
Paper: M.A. Weffers-Albu, J.J. Lukkien, P.D.V. v.d. Stok;
Analysis of a Chain of Dependent Components with a Starting Time-driven Component;
SOIA 2006,
·
Report: BETSY
consortium, Betsy deliverable D7, model composition and end-to-end
prediction, version 6, 2006
Patents
patent |
Submission date |
Title |
NL050037 |
2005-Jan-17 |
System, receiver,
transmitter, method , software for distributing |