Bharat K. Bhargava

PROMISE: peer-to-peer media streaming using CollectCast

We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of PROMISE, a novel peer-to-peer media streaming system encompassing the key functions of peer lookup, peer-based aggregated streaming, and dynamic adaptations to network and peer conditions. Particularly, PROMISE is based on a new application level P2P service called CollectCast. CollectCast performs three main functions: (1) inferring and leveraging the underlying network topology and performance information for the selection of senders; (2) monitoring the status of peers and connections and reacting to peer/connection failure or degradation with low overhead; (3) dynamically switching active senders and standby senders, so that the collective network performance out of the active senders remains satisfactory. Based on both real-world measurement and simulation, we evaluate the performance of PROMISE, and discuss lessons learned from our experience with respect to the practicality and further optimization of PROMISE.

A Survey of Computation Offloading for Mobile Systems

Mobile systems have limited resources, such as battery life, network bandwidth, storage capacity, and processor performance. These restrictions may be alleviated by computation offloading: sending heavy computation to resourceful servers and receiving the results from these servers. Many issues related to offloading have been investigated in the past decade. This survey paper provides an overview of the background, techniques, systems, and research areas for offloading computation. We also describe directions for future research.

On peer-to-peer media streaming

In this paper, we study a peer-to-peer media streaming system with the following characteristics: (1) its streaming capacity grows dynamically; (2) peers do not exhibit server-like behavior; (3) peers are heterogeneous in their bandwidth contribution; and (4) each streaming session may involve multiple supplying peers. Based on these characteristics, we investigate two problems: (1) how to assign media data to multiple supplying peers in one streaming session and (2) how to quickly amplify the systems total streaming capacity. Our solution to the first problem is an optimal media data assignment algorithm OTS/sub p2p/, which results in minimum buffering delay in the consequent streaming session. Our solution to the second problem is a distributed differentiated admission control protocol DAC/sub p2p/. By differentiating between requesting peers with different outbound bandwidth, DAC/sub p2p/ achieves fast system capacity amplification; benefits all requesting peers in admission rate, waiting time, and buffering delay; and creates an incentive for peers to offer their truly available out-bound bandwidth.

A fast MPEG video encryption algorithm

Multimedia data secmity is important for multimedia commerce. Previous cryptography studies have focused on text data. The encryption algorithms devdoped to secure text data may not be suitable to multimedia applications becattse of large data sizes and real time constraint. For multimedia applications, light weight encryption algorithms are attractive. We present a novel MPEG Video Encryption Algorithm, called VEA The basic idea of VEA is to use a secret key randomly changing the sign bits of all of the DCT coefficients of MPEG video. VEA’S encryption effects are achieved by the IDCT during MPEG video decompression processing. VEA adds minimum overhead to MPEG codecj one Mm&e XOR operation to each none zero DCT coefficient. A software implementation of VEA is fast enough to meet the real time requirement of MPEG video applications. Our experimental results show that VEA achieves satisfying results. We believe that it can be used to secure video-on-demand, tideo conferencing and video email applications.

Visualization of wormholes in sensor networks

Several protocols have been proposed to defend against wormholes in ad hoc networks by adopting positioning devices, synchronized clocks, or directional antennas. In this paper, we propose a mechanism, MDS-VOW, to detect wormholes in a sensor network. MDS-VOW first reconstructs the layout of the sensors using multi-dimensional scaling. To compensate the distortions caused by distance measurement errors, a surface smoothing scheme is adopted. MDS-VOW then detects the wormhole by visualizing the anomalies introduced by the attack. The anomalies, which are caused by the fake connections through the wormhole, bend the reconstructed surface to pull the sensors that are faraway to each other. Through detecting the bending feature, the wormhole is located and the fake connections are identified. The contributions of MDS-VOW are: (1) it does not require the sensors to be equipped with special hardware, (2) it adopts and combines the techniques from social science, computer graphics, and scientific visualization to attack the problem in network security. We examine the accuracy of the proposed mechanism when the sensors are deployed in a circle area and one wormhole exists in the network. The results show that MDS-VOW has a low false alarm ratio when the distance measurement errors are not large.

Secure and efficient access to outsourced data

Providing secure and efficient access to large scale outsourced data is an important component of cloud computing. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to solve this problem in owner-write-users-read applications. We propose to encrypt every data block with a different key so that flexible cryptography-based access control can be achieved. Through the adoption of key derivation methods, the owner needs to maintain only a few secrets. Analysis shows that the key derivation procedure using hash functions will introduce very limited computation overhead. We propose to use over-encryption and/or lazy revocation to prevent revoked users from getting access to updated data blocks. We design mechanisms to handle both updates to outsourced data and changes in user access rights. We investigate the overhead and safety of the proposed approach, and study mechanisms to improve data access efficiency.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing over mobile ad hoc networks

Current peer-to-peer file-sharing systems mostly work on wired networks. Mobile ad hoc network is characterized as multihop wireless communications between mobile devices. Five routing approaches with different complexity are proposed to enable peer-to-peer file-sharing over mobile ad hoc networks. The complexity of the proposed approaches is evaluated and compared. It is concluded that the cross-layer protocols perform better than simply overlaying peer-to-peer searching protocol on mobile ad hoc networks.

Maintaining consistency of data in mobile distributed environments

To deal with the frequent, foreseeable and variable disconnections that occur in a mobile environment, we introduce a flexible, two-level consistency model. Semantically related or closely located data are grouped together to form a cluster. While all data inside a cluster are mutually consistent, degrees of inconsistency are allowed among data at different clusters. To take advantage of the predictability of disconnections, and to accommodate mobility, the cluster configuration is dynamic. We allow transactions to exhibit certain degrees of tolerance for inconsistencies by introducing strict and weak operations. Weak operations are operations that can be executed under weaker consistency requirements. We define correctness criteria for schedules that involve weak operations and compare them with traditional serializability criteria. Finally, we argue that our model is appropriate for a variety of other environments including very large databases and multidatabases.

GnuStream: a P2P media streaming system prototype

We present the design and prototype of GnuStream, a peer- to-peer (P2P) and receiver-driven media streaming system. GnuStream is built on top of Gnutella, and it integrates dynamic peer location and streaming capacity aggregation. Each GnuStream streaming session is controlled by the receiver peer and involves a dynamic set of peer senders instead of one fixed sender. The receiver aggregates streaming bandwidth from the multiple senders, achieving load distribution and fast reaction to sender capacity and on/off-line status changes. The effectiveness of GnuStream is demonstrated by our experiments with its prototype, which serves as the basis for real-world development and evaluation of resilient P2P media streaming services.

An efficient MPEG video encryption algorithm

Multimedia data security is important for multimedia commerce. Previous cryptography studies have focused on text data. The encryption algorithms developed to secure text data may not be suitable to multimedia applications because of large data sizes and real time constraints. For multimedia applications, light weight encryption algorithms are attractive. We present an efficient MPEG video encryption algorithm. This algorithm uses a secret key randomly changing the sign bits of encoded differential values of DC coefficients of I pictures and the sign bits of encoded differential values of motion vectors of B and P pictures. The encryption effects are achieved by the IDCT during MPEG video decompression processing. This algorithm adds very small overhead to MPEG codec. A software implementation is fast enough to meet the real time requirement of MPEG video applications. Experimental results show that this algorithm achieves satisfying results. We believe that it can be used to secure video-on-demand, video conferencing and video email applications.