Odysseus

The increased capabilities of mobile devices allow them to operate more like desktop computing environments and as the technology improves the demand for suitable applications increases. Streaming multimedia is the next stage in the development of services for mobile users. The scope for streamed content includes music videos, video-on-demand services, news broadcasts, sporting events and virtually any multimedia content the user may be interested in. Many network operators see data distribution as a way of recouping the heavy investment in infrastructure for 3G andWireless LAN. Operators will charge by the packet, similar to the fee structure used by GPRS providers available at the moment. With network operators employing this type of payment, compression of data will become a huge concern for users. Finding the trade-off between the smallest file size possible but maintaining a certain level of quality will be the focus of streaming application developers. The goal of this project is to describe the implementation of a web-based multi-agent streaming system designed for mobile devices and to outline the development of the contributing technologies. The intention of the system is to provide a web-interface through which users have access to a wide range of multimedia content that is encoded specifically for streaming to hand-held devices. The project also aims to demonstrate the effects of different encoding parameters on a video. Much research has been conducted in the area of QoS, and while it is a major consideration for streaming services it is not the primary focus of this project.

This project requires that the student should carry out the following tasks:

* Study the streaming multimedia technology and evaluate its performance.
* Propose a suitable web-based software architecture with appropriate level of abstraction.
* Define a Java based framework, agent-based toolkit and API for the development of a MAS to stream multimedia which will include: Authoring; Distribution; Playback and Bandwidth sensing technology.
* Research stream multimedia applications and think of other original applications for your platform.
* Design of a flexible and intuitive user interface.
* Include the digital money concept in the implementation in the form of credits
* Implement an interface for handheld devices with streaming support.
* Produce detailed development, reference and maintenance manuals.
* Evaluation.

Relevance of Project to the Host Laboratories:

The Secure Streaming Multimedia project is one which brings together experts in multimedia, security and software engineering and experts in user interface design. The intention of the system is to provide a web-interface through which users have access to a wide range of multimedia content that is securily encoded specifically for streaming to hand-held devices.

Supervisors:

Dr. Eleni Mangina (Computer Science and Informatics, UCD)

Keywords:

Secure streaming multimedia; handheld devices.