Quality of Service in IN-home digital networks

Alina Albu

22 July 2003

Activities General theory about networks Projects in Philips Research

QoS RM V-QoS QoSIH KISS

Conference papers on QoS

Contents1. Context – Ambient Intelligence

2. QoS – Directions of research (Philips)

V-QoS (QoS RM, SVA) QoSIH KISS

3. Conference papers on QoS4. Project plan

Ambient Intelligence concept of ubiquitous computing - main pillars of AI =>

implies that a user can have access to any source of information anywhere, anytime.

To realize this concept => envision a huge distributed network, consisting of thousands of interconnected embedded systems. The applications provided lean heavily on media processing and streaming data, which are handled by system nodes and networks respectively => they will be resource constrained.

Typically, the resource needs of the applications change over time. To adapt to these resource variations, applications have the ability to trade resource usage for quality.

QoS Directions of Research (Philips) Quality of Service (QoS) based resource

management enables tradeoffs on resource constrained systems.

V-QoS - QoS in the consumer terminal (CT) QoS RM SVA

QoSIH – QoS in the network KISS - research on network and CT

QoS combination- Studies how they influence each other

V-QoS - Context Consumer terminals (CT) evolve from straightforward

terminals of a video broadcast network (TV sets) and a communication network (telephone) to interactive multimedia terminals and to elements in an in-home network, ambient intelligence environment.

The basic media in CT are high-quality audio and video.

If the basic media processing functions are scalable, other media processing functions can be added at little or no extra cost.

V-QoS QoS in CT (Consumer Terminals)

.. is about trading resources for the quality of the outputs, by scaling the media functions that produce these outputs.

Software functions can be designed to provide different levels of quality, matching the available resources to the actual requirements.

V-QoS SVA (Scalable Video Algorithms)

Provide functionality at different visual output quality levels with different resource requirements.

Their output quality levels and resource requirements can be changed during run-time.

V-QoS QoS RM

Provides framework for QoS-based resource management

Enables multiple SVAs to run in parallel in a cost- effective way. How ? ->

VQoSHow ?

...by allocating resource budgets to applications.

How?

…by defining Resource Consuming Entities (RCE) as active components within an application, to which limited resource budgets are allocated, and that are able to run with acceptable results on this limited resource budget.

V-QoS Each RCE = a collection of SVAs

=> allocating budgets to RCE implies allocating budgets for the SVAs that compose the RCE.

Each SVA can provide a number of quality levels

=> the quality level of the RCE that contains the SVAs, is a combination of the current quality levels of each of its SVAs.

V-QoS

Application running in a particular mode

=> RCE modes

=> A particular combination of SVAs each providing a number of quality levels.

V-QoS

OffNatural motion

Decoding

12

123

RCE

SVAs

SVA quality levels

RCE controller:

QL1 Decoder-> ql 2, Nat. motion -> ql 3

QL2 Decoder-> ql 2, Nat. motion -> ql 2

QL3 Decoder-> ql 2, Nat. motion -> ql 1

QL4 Decoder-> ql 2, Nat. motion -> ql Off

QL5 Decoder-> ql 1, Nat. motion -> ql 3

QL6 Decoder-> ql 1, Nat. motion -> ql 2

… …

V-QoSVideo Application

Mode 1 (higher quality)

Mode 2 (lower quality)

Downscaling

Simpledecoding

Sharp.enh.

RCE 2

Naturalmotion

RCE 1 Decoding

U I App. Man.

Mode Man.

Qual. Man.

Budget Man.

RCEs

See video window

See video windowMode 1

Mode 1

(QL1)

Mode 1 (QL1) requires 50% of available resources.Possible?

NO

Mode 2

(QL1)

NO

Mode 2 (QL1) requires 30% of available resources.Possible?

YESYESYES

See video windowMode 2

Mode 2

(QL1)

Reserve/ enforce 30%

Set Mode 2(QL1)

QoSIH QoS in the context of networks:The ability of a network to assure that its traffic

and its service requirements can be satisfied end to end.

The types of information handled ranges between:

Real-time traffic (audio, video) - can tolerate some loss, but no delay

Non real-time traffic (computer data) – can tolerate some delay but not loss

QoSIH

Project Aim :

To increase the number of applications that can run with satisfactory results for the user on an in-home wireless and wired digital network

QoSIH

Project description:- The project addresses the area of network management for

A/V with adjustable quality in the home.

- It is required that the network transports as many streams over the network as it is acceptable for the end-user.

- The number of streams can be increased by reducing the quality of the stream.

- The project concentrates on bandwidth management decisions.

QoSIH

Project relevance:

- Philips products with the proposed project will significantly reduce bandwidth requirements.

- A user can enjoy more quality A/V applications on his/her network than without the proposed result.

QoSIH

QoSIH Demonstrator(1) Based on an n-layered MPEG2 scalable video stream (an

encoder produces all n layers)

The results of the encoding can be stored on disk for a later retrieval.

The retrieved layers are sent in packets over the network (a packet contains data from one layer only).

At the destination the packets of the n layers are recombined to produce standard MPEG2 stream.

QoSIH

QoSIH Demonstrator (2)Requirements:

Parameter settings of encoder Create network packets of generated code Send packets of n layers over n RTP connections Feed the packets in the right order to the re-combiner Connect the recombined MPEG2 stream to a decoder

and display Create a user interface to manipulate the demonstrator

KISS

Project aim:

Gain insight in the balance between network QoS and terminal resource management

Develop generic methods,techniques and guidelines for integration of heterogeneous software stacks, to make integration easier and less time consuming.

KISS

KISS Demonstrator

Need learning vehicle to come up with fast and simple integration strategies while ensuring streaming performance in embedded distributed systems.

=> a first step towards a combined solution for network QoS and terminal resource management will result as well.

Demonstrator based on existing solution – WWICE 2 system

KISS

WWICE (Window to the World of Information, Communication and Entertainment)

provides a complete and coherent system environment

for the home.

Provides an architecture for distributed digital audio/video systems supporting multimedia applications

KISS - WWICE architecture

KISS

KISS Demonstrator set-up

KISS - Demonstrator Architecture

Project Plan

0 1 2 3 4 year2

mth

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6

mth

.4

mth

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Orientation Presentation

25 Nov.

More directed research-MRM/Define subject

Thesis main work

Writing/reformulate publications/thesis

Subject defined