and cellular UMTS MAC protocols) across multiple unreliable communication links using a new link layer communication model in concert with a smart antenna aperture design referred to as Vector Antenna. A vector antenna is a ‘smart’ antenna system and as any smart antenna aperture, the design inherently requires unique microwave component performance as well as Digital Signal Processing (DSP) capabilities. This performance and these capabilities are further enhanced with a patented wireless protocol stack capability.
(WVSNs) critically depends on the resources of the nodes forming the sensor
networks. In the era of big data, Internet of Things (IoT), and distributed
demand and solutions, there is a need for multi-dimensional data to be part of
the Sensor Network data that is easily accessible and consumable by humanity as
well as machinery. Images and video are expected to become as ubiquitous as is
the scalar data in traditional sensor networks. The inception of video-streaming
over the Internet, heralded a relentless research for effective ways of
distributing video in a scalable and cost effective way. There has been novel
implementation attempts across several network layers. Due to the inherent
complications of backward compatibility and need for standardization across
network layers, there has been a refocused attention to address most of the
video distribution over the application layer. As a result, a few video
streaming solutions over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) have been
proposed. Most notable are Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and the Motion
Picture Experts Groups Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH). These
frameworks, do not address the typical and future WVSN use cases. A highly
flexible Wireless Video Sensor Network Platform and compatible DASH (WVSNP-DASH)
are introduced. The platform's goal is to usher video as a data element that
can be integrated into traditional and non-Internet networks. A low cost,
scalable node is built from the ground up to be fully compatible with the
Internet of Things Machine to Machine (M2M) concept, as well as the ability to
be easily re-targeted to new applications in a short time. Flexi-WVSNP design
includes a multi-radio node, a middle-ware for sensor operation and
communication, a cross platform client facing data retriever/player framework,
scalable security as well as a cohesive but decoupled hardware and software
design.
providing flexible network services at relative high transmission rates. This work investigates the effectiveness of localized routing that prioritizes transmissions over the local gateway to the optical network and avoids wireless packet transmissions in radio zones that do not contain the packet source or destination. Existing routing schemes for FiWi networks consider mainly hop-count and delay metrics over a flat WMN node topology and do not specifically prioritize the local network structure. The combination of clustered and localized routing (CluLoR) performs better in terms of throughput-delay compared to routing schemes that are based on minimum hop-count which do not consider traffic localization. Subsequently, this work also investigates the packet delays when relatively low-rate traffic that has traversed a wireless network is mixed with conventional high-rate PON-only traffic. A range of different FiWi network architectures with different dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) mechanisms is considered. The grouping of the optical network units (ONUs) in the double-phase polling (DPP) DBA mechanism in long-range (order of 100~Km) FiWi networks is closely examined, and a novel grouping by cycle length (GCL) strategy that achieves favorable packet delay performance is introduced. At the end, this work proposes a novel backhaul network architecture based on a Smart Gateway (Sm-GW) between the small cell base stations (e.g., LTE eNBs) and the conventional backhaul gateways, e.g., LTE Servicing/Packet Gateway (S/P-GW). The Sm-GW accommodates flexible number of small cells while reducing the infrastructure requirements at the S-GW of LTE backhaul. In contrast to existing methods, the proposed Sm-GW incorporates the scheduling mechanisms to achieve the network fairness while sharing the resources among all the connected small cells base stations.
Video encoding for multimedia services over communication networks has significantly advanced in recent years with the development of the highly efficient and flexible H.264/AVC video coding standard and its SVC extension. The emerging H.265/HEVC video coding standard as well as 3D video coding further advance video coding for multimedia communications. This paper first gives an overview of these new video coding standards and then examines their implications for multimedia communications by studying the traffic characteristics of long videos encoded with the new coding standards. We review video coding advances from MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Part 2 to H.264/AVC and its SVC and MVC extensions as well as H.265/HEVC. For single-layer (nonscalable) video, we compare H.265/HEVC and H.264/AVC in terms of video traffic and statistical multiplexing characteristics. Our study is the first to examine the H.265/HEVC traffic variability for long videos. We also illustrate the video traffic characteristics and statistical multiplexing of scalable video encoded with the SVC extension of H.264/AVC as well as 3D video encoded with the MVC extension of H.264/AVC.