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

Contents 1. Context – Ambient Intelligence 2. QoS – Directions of research (Philips) V-QoS (QoS RM, SVA) QoSIH KISS 3. Conference papers on QoS 4. 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 ? ->

VQoS How ?...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 Off Natural motion Decoding 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-QoS Video Application Mode 1 (higher quality) Mode 2 (lower quality) Down scaling Simple decoding Sharp. enh. RCE 2 Natural motion RCE 1 Decoding

U IApp. Man. Mode Man. Qual. Man. Budget Man. RCEs See video window 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? YES See video window 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 year 2 mth. 6 mth. 4 mth. Orientation Presentation 25 Nov. More directed research-MRM/ Define subject Thesis main work Writing/reformulate publications/thesis Subject defined