Yiwei Thomas Hou

Streaming video over the Internet: approaches and directions

Due to the explosive growth of the Internet and increasing demand for multimedia information on the Web, streaming video over the Internet has received tremendous attention from academia and industry. Transmission of real-time video typically has bandwidth, delay, and loss requirements. However, the current best-effort Internet does not offer any quality of service (QoS) guarantees to streaming video. Furthermore, for video multicast, it is difficult to achieve both efficiency and flexibility. Thus, Internet streaming video poses many challenges. In this article we cover six key areas of streaming video. Specifically, we cover video compression, application-layer QoS control, continuous media distribution services, streaming servers, media synchronization mechanisms, and protocols for streaming media. For each area, we address the particular issues and review major approaches and mechanisms. We also discuss the tradeoffs of the approaches and point out future research directions.

On energy provisioning and relay node placement for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks that operate on batteries have limited network lifetime. There have been extensive recent research efforts on how to design protocols and algorithms to prolong network lifetime. However, due to energy constraint, even under the most efficient protocols and algorithms, the network lifetime may still be unable to meet the missions requirements. In this paper, we consider the energy provisioning (EP) problem for a two-tiered wireless sensor network. In addition to provisioning additional energy on the existing nodes, we also consider deploying relay nodes (RNs) into the network to mitigate network geometric deficiencies and prolong network lifetime. We formulate the joint problem of EP and RN placement (EP-RNP) into a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem. Since an MINLP problem is NP-hard in general, and even state-of-the-art software and techniques are unable to offer satisfactory solutions, we develop a heuristic algorithm, called Smart Pairing and INtelligent Disc Search (SPINDS), to address this problem. We show a number of novel algorithmic design techniques in the design of SPINDS that effectively transform a complex MINLP problem into a linear programming (LP) problem without losing critical points in its search space. Through numerical results, we show that SPINDS offers a very attractive solution and some important insights to the EP-RNP problem.

Transporting real-time video over the Internet: challenges and approaches

Delivering real-time video over the Internet is an important component of many Internet multimedia applications. Transmission of real-time video has bandwidth, delay, and loss requirements. However the current Internet does not offer any quality of service (QoS) guarantees to video transmission over the Internet. In addition, the heterogeneity of the networks and end systems makes it difficult to multicast Internet video in an efficient and flexible way. Thus, designing protocols and mechanisms for Internet video transmission poses many challenges. In this paper, we take a holistic approach to these challenges and present solutions from both transport and compression perspectives. With the holistic approach, we design a framework for transporting real-time Internet video, which includes two components, namely, congestion control and error control. Specifically congestion control consists of rate control, rate-adaptive encoding, and rate shaping; error control consists of forward error correction (FEC), retransmission error resilience, and error concealment. For the design of each component in the framework, we classify approaches and summarize representative research work. We point out there exists a design space which can be explored by video application designers and suggest that the synergy of both transport and compression could provide good solutions.

Toward secure distributed spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio is a revolutionary technology that promises to alleviate the spectrum shortage problem and to bring about remarkable improvement in spectrum utilization. Spectrum sensing is one of the essential mechanisms of CR and is an active area of research. Although the operational aspects of spectrum sensing are being studied actively, its security aspects have attracted very little attention. In this paper, we discuss security issues that may pose a serious threat to spectrum sensing. Specifically, we focus on two security threats - incumbent emulation and spectrum sensing data falsification - that may wreak havoc in distributed spectrum sensing. We also discuss methods for countering these threats and the technical hurdles that must be overcome to implement such countermeasures.

Scalable video coding and transport over broadband wireless networks

With the emergence of broadband wireless networks and increasing demand of multimedia information on the Internet, wireless multimedia services are foreseen to become widely deployed in the next decade. Real-time video transmission typically has requirements on quality of service (QoS). However, wireless channels are unreliable and the channel bandwidth varies with time, which may cause severe degradation in video quality. In addition, for video multicast, the heterogeneity of receivers makes it difficult to achieve efficiency and flexibility. To address these issues, three techniques, namely, scalable video coding, network-aware adaptation of end systems, and adaptive QoS support from networks, have been developed. This paper unifies the three techniques and presents an adaptive framework, which specifically addresses video transport over wireless networks. The adaptive framework consists of three basic components: (1) scalable video representations; (2) network-aware end systems; and (3) adaptive services. Under this framework, as wireless channel conditions change, mobile terminals and network elements can scale the video streams and transport the scaled video streams to receivers with a smooth change of perceptual quality. The key advantages of the adaptive framework are: (1) perceptual quality is changed gracefully during periods of QoS fluctuations and hand-offs; and (2) the resources are shared in a fair manner.

Spectrum Sharing for Multi-Hop Networking with Cognitive Radios

Cognitive radio (CR) capitalizes advances in signal processing and radio technology and is capable of reconfiguring RF and switching to desired frequency bands. It is a frequency-agile data communication device that is vastly more powerful than recently proposed multi-channel multi-radio (MC-MR) technology. In this paper, we investigate the important problem of multi-hop networking with CR nodes. For such a network, each node has a pool of frequency bands (typically of unequal size) that can be used for communication. The potential difference in the bandwidth among the available frequency bands prompts the need to further divide these bands into sub-bands for optimal spectrum sharing. We characterize the behavior and constraints for such a multi-hop CR network from multiple layers, including modeling of spectrum sharing and sub-band division, scheduling and interference constraints, and flow routing. We develop a mathematical formulation with the objective of minimizing the required network-wide radio spectrum resource for a set of user sessions. Since the formulated model is a mixed-integer non-linear program (MINLP), which is NP-hard in general, we develop a lower bound for the objective by relaxing the integer variables and using a linearization technique. Subsequently, we design a near-optimal algorithm to solve this MINLP problem. This algorithm is based on a novel sequential fixing procedure, where the integer variables are determined iteratively via a sequence of linear programs. Simulation results show that solutions obtained by this algorithm are very close to the lower bounds obtained via the proposed relaxation, thus suggesting that the solution produced by the algorithm is near-optimal.

Service overlay networks: SLAs, QoS, and bandwidth provisioning

We advocate the notion of service overlay network (SON) as an effective means to address some of the issues, in particular, end-to-end quality of service (QoS), plaguing the current Internet, and to facilitate the creation and deployment of value-added Internet services such as VoIP, Video-on-Demand, and other emerging QoS-sensitive services. The SON purchases bandwidth with certain QoS guarantees from the individual network domains via bilateral service level agreement (SLA) to build a logical end-to-end service delivery infrastructure on top of the existing data transport networks. Via a service contract, users directly pay the SON for using the value-added services provided by the SON.In this paper, we study the bandwidth provisioning problem for an SON which buys bandwidth from the underlying network domains to provide end-to-end value-added QoS sensitive services such as VoIP and Video-on-Demand. A key problem in the SON deployment is the problem of bandwidth provisioning, which is critical to cost recovery in deploying and operating the value-added services over the SON. The paper is devoted to the study of this problem. We formulate the bandwidth provisioning problem mathematically, taking various factors such as SLA, service QoS, traffic demand distributions, and bandwidth costs. Analytical models and approximate solutions are developed for both static and dynamic bandwidth provisioning. Numerical studies are also performed to illustrate the properties of the proposed solutions and demonstrate the effect of traffic demand distributions and bandwidth costs on SON bandwidth provisioning.

On end-to-end architecture for transporting MPEG-4 video over the Internet

With the success of the Internet and flexibility of MPEG-4, transporting MPEG-4 video over the Internet is expected to be an important component of many multimedia applications in the near future. Video applications typically have delay and loss requirements, which cannot be adequately supported by the current Internet. Thus, it is a challenging problem to design an efficient MPEG-4 video delivery system that can maximize the perceptual quality while achieving high resource utilization. This paper addresses this problem by presenting an end-to-end architecture for transporting MPEG-4 video over the Internet. We present a framework for transporting MPEG-4 video, which includes source rate adaptation, packetization, feedback control, and error control. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) a feedback control algorithm based on the Real Time Protocol (RTP) and the Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP); (2) an adaptive source-encoding algorithm for MPEG-4 video which is able to adjust the output rate of MPEG-4 video to the desired rate; and (3) an efficient and robust packetization algorithm for MPEG video bit-streams at the sync layer for Internet transport. Simulation results show that our end-to-end transport architecture achieves good perceptual picture quality for MPEG-4 video under low bit-rate and varying network conditions and efficiently utilizes network resources.

Optimal base-station locations in two-tiered wireless sensor networks

We consider generic two-tiered wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consisting of sensor clusters deployed around strategic locations, and base-stations (BSs) whose locations are relatively flexible. Within a sensor cluster, there are many small sensor nodes (SNs) that capture, encode, and transmit relevant information from a designated area, and there is at least one application node (AN) that receives raw data from these SNs, creates a comprehensive local-view, and forwards the composite bit-stream toward a BS. This paper focuses on the topology control process for ANs and BSs, which constitute the upper tier of two-tiered WSNs. Since heterogeneous ANs are battery-powered and energy-constrained, their node lifetime directly affects the network lifetime of WSNs. By proposing algorithmic approaches to locate BSs optimally, we can maximize the topological network lifetime of WSNs deterministically, even when the initial energy provisioning for ANs is no longer always proportional to their average bit-stream rate. The obtained optimal BS locations are under different lifetime definitions according to the mission criticality of WSNs. By studying intrinsic properties of WSNs, we establish the upper and lower bounds of maximal topological lifetime, which enable a quick assessment of energy provisioning feasibility and topology control necessity. Numerical results are given to demonstrate the efficacy and optimality of the proposed topology control approaches designed for maximizing network lifetime of WSNs.

Optimal Spectrum Sharing for Multi-Hop Software Defined Radio Networks

Software defined radio (SDR) capitalizes advances in signal processing and radio technology and is capable of reconfiguring RF and switching to desired frequency bands. It is a frequency-agile data communication device that is vastly more powerful than recently proposed multi-channel multi-radio (MC-MR) technology. In this paper, we investigate the important problem of multi-hop networking with SDR nodes. For such network, each node has a pool of frequency bands (not necessarily of equal size) that can be used for communication. The uneven size of bands in the radio spectrum prompts the need of further division into sub-bands for optimal spectrum sharing. We characterize behaviors and constraints for such multi-hop SDR network from multiple layers, including modeling of spectrum sharing and sub-band division, scheduling and interference constraints, and flow routing. We give a formal mathematical formulation with the objective of minimizing the required network-wide radio spectrum resource for a set of user sessions. Since such problem formulation falls into mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP), which is NP-hard in general, we develop a lower bound for the objective by relaxing the integer variables and linearization. Subsequently, we develop a near-optimal algorithm to this MINLP problem. This algorithm is based on a novel sequential fixing procedure, where the integer variables are determined iteratively via a sequence of linear programming. Simulation results show that solutions obtained by this algorithm are very close to lower bounds obtained via relaxation, thus suggesting that the solution produced by the algorithm is near-optimal.