6374629
A Multimedia Synchronization Model and Its Implementation in Transport Protocols
An implementation of a synchronization mechanism in transport protocol to support multimedia applications over a packet or cell switched network is proposed. In designing such a mechanism for practical use, ease of implementation and capability of handling random delay of packets are two key issues for success. Since the random delay of packet or cell switched networks makes synchronization among media more complicated after the transmission across the network, a model which considers the random transmission delay is hence required to specify the temporal relationship among media. Therefore, a real-time synchronization model is presented to satisfy this requirement in the paper. Based on the proposed synchronization model, a transport protocol, namely the multimedia synchronization transport protocol (MSTP), is designed and implemented. We have implemented a prototype system using the MSTP protocol and built a simulation system for the wide area network (WAN) environment in order to evaluate the performance of the MSTP protocol.
8861403
Design and implementation of the just-in-time retrieving policy for schedule-based distributed multimedia presentations
In order to provide the smooth playback of a distributed multimedia presentation, the object-retrieving engine for the player must fetch each object before its playback time. In this paper, a smart object-retrieving engine is proposed, which adopts a retrieving policy named the just-in-time policy. The policy expects the retrieval process of an object to finish right before the playback time of the object to achieve a better buffer utilization and network bandwidth efficiency. The proposed object-retrieving engine focuses on SMIL1.0-based multimedia presentations. By converting the synchronization relationship of objects in the SMIL 1.0 document to Real-Time Synchronization Model, which simplifies the handling of the synchronization relationship, and considering the end-to-end bandwidth as well as the user interactions, the object-retrieving engine determines the object request time for each object. The engine issues the request to fetch each object for the ongoing presentation at the object request time, and provides the player with proper media objects. The feasibility and better performance of the proposed just-in-time retrieving policy had been proved by performance measurements of system implementation.
6411174
SMILAuthor: An Authoring System for SMIL-Based Multimedia Presentations
In this paper, an authoring tool named SMILAuthor for SMIL-based multimedia presentations is proposed. SMILAuthor adopts standard SMIL language as the format of the presentation to generate reusable and easily accessible presentations. Moreover, powerful editing functions such as cut, copy, and paste are supported by the system in a timeline-based manner. In order to support timeline-based editing functions, the playback duration of each object in the input SMIL script is first calculated by the parsing process of the system. The parsing process extracts and converts the temporal relationship of the input script to Real-Time Synchronization Model (RTSM), and the playback duration of each object in the script is then computed by traversing the RTSM. Editing results are converted to the SMIL format and saved in the output file. Language structure of SMIL is hidden by the system and the temporal information is visualized in the timeline manner to provide users an easy way to understand and control the timing of each object. Implementation of the system provides a friendly WYSIWYG environment and multiple views/windows are provided by the system to help authors compose multimedia presentations efficiently.
14819907
Precise RSSI with High Process Variation Tolerance
A receiving signal strength indicator (RSSI) built with transconductance amplifiers is presented. The RSSI achieves high tolerance to process variations by utilizing the unique nature of branch currents in a transconductance amplifier. These branch currents are used to implement a current-mode rectifier and amplitude clipping circuit that are tolerant of process variations. An on-chip offset control loop permits the entire RSSI to be realized with only one external component. In 0.18 mum CMOS with a 1.8V supply, the RSSI draws 2.5mA and provides 80dB of offset suppression and more than 70dB of log-linear range with less than +/-2dB error due to process variation.
7849532
A Peer-to-Peer Resource Sharing System with Data Grid Technology for Mobile Devices
Increases in mobile device processing power, storage capacity, and connectivity in recent years have led to a rapid rise in mobile device use. But mobile users face challenges in making connections with other users in order to share resources. To address this issue, we propose an architecture that uses peer-to-peer protocol to establish a resource sharing platform for mobile devices, combined with a data grid to help analyze and classify resources.
16530408
Searching behavior in peer-to-peer communities
The focus of this paper is the searching behavior in peer-to-peer (P2P) communities and in that context, will discuss potential for enhancement of the P2P protocol using searching behavior. Due to excessive network traffic, network scalability is a major P2P problem. The purpose of this paper is to study searching behavior by using log files and subsequently, will propose solutions to reduce the amount of redundant searching activities. In the current research, log data containing over 5 million query messages was collected over seven consecutive days using a Gnutella-based P2P program. The results of this study will be instrumental in providing ways to reduce existing problems with P2P network traffic.
8997074
Applying Multi Agent Technology to Supply Chain Management
Supply Chain Management (SCM) is extremely important to the manufacturing and retailing industries. Profitability of enterprises in these two industries depends on the efficiency and effectiveness on they manage their supply chains. Information technology has been a key element in supporting supply chain management. As the access to the Internet becomes easier, managers are able to access real-time data and use decision support tools to support their decision making. In this paper, we investigate how multi-agent technology and constraint network can be integrated together to improve the efficiency and transparency of supply chain management. A multi-agent based supply chain management system has been developed to support communication, coordination, collaboration, and operation of different entities in supply chains. Which enabled the warehouses and plants to query and share information. A constraint network model has been applied to model the objectives and constraints of each entity in supply chains. Two experiments have been conducted to evaluate the usefulness and performance of the system with participation of a retailing firm. The results indicated that the proposed system has several benefits. For example, improve efficiency by saving time and efforts for decision makers as well as improve the quality and responsiveness of decision making by value-added services, such as, bullwhip detection agent.
45556411
On Implementation of a Scalable Wallet-Size Cluster Computing System for Multimedia Applications
In order to obtain a low-cost, low-power consumption and small sized digital home processing center, especially for multimedia applications, we propose a scalable wallet-size cluster computing system in this paper. Such system uses low-cost, low-power consumption and small sized microprocessors as computing nodes to form a cluster system. 
 
The main reason why we are interested to investigate and build such system is to increase the computing power and to accelerate the H.264 video processing. We analyzed the H.264 decoder scheme and distributed the most heavy-load computations in the decoder scheme to each computing node (or microprocessor) of the cluster system for the processing of signals, in parallel. To run multimedia applications in this cluster system, an efficient real-time video processing is implemented.