Research project P5/11 (Research action P5)
One of the key technological challenges to advance our knowledge-based society is the development of mobile multimedia communication systems and networks. Some general trends we observe today are: the increasing importance of multimedia services, the unprecedented growth of mobile telephony, the increasing importance of the Internet protocol as the integrating network technology, the importance of wireless access to the network, the increasing diversity of terminals. It is interesting to observe that the push towards wireless networks, the diversity in terminals and services, and the requirement for QoS and mobility, results in a situation where services should be matched to physical layer aspects (and of course with the networks and systems in between). The IAP/PAI consortium has bundled the expertise at the different levels required for the development of future mobile multimedia communication systems and networks. As a result, the project has been structured in a natural top-down approach, starting from the applications and ending with physical layer aspects. The interaction between these different fields of expertise will form a strong basis for the success of the project. The project is structured as follows:
WP1 : Applications
WP2 : Network Design
WP3 : Traffic and Performance Modelling
WP4 : Modulation, Channel Coding and Propagation
The major goals of the project can be summarized as follows:
- Development of a software architecture for the use of dynamic metadata for the support of multimedia applications in a mobile environment.
- The development of highly-scalable, object-based video coding schemes.
- To develop new terminal concepts taking into account the format in which the data are transported between the multimedia source and a portable terminal.
- To design and evaluate new protocols that allow seamless hand-offs and support end-to-end QoS for mobile terminals/services in homogeneous and heterogeneous network environments (including multicast support and the use of active networking).
- To study generic queueing models which deal with connection and handover blocking probability in a wireless environment. To develop a generic stochastic model for the evaluation of macro- and micro-mobility solutions on the network layer.
- To develop next generation QoS-enabled mobile ad hoc networks supporting heterogeneous and fast moving terminals based on active networking technology. To develop advanced routing algorithms and model contention resolution and reservation schemes.
- To model web-type applications and to develop traffic models including characteristics related to mobility.
- To study the performance of appropriate error detection and retransmission techniques (ARQ protocols) in a mobile and wireless environment (including TCP enhancements).
- Design of receiver algorithms (synchronization, equalization, detection) for advanced modulation and transmission techniques.
- The exploitation of multiple transmit and receive antennas and so-called smart antenna principles to enhance capacity and performance, and applying space-time coding to such multiple-input multiple-output systems.
- The development of iterative (turbo) processing in multiuser detection, interference suppression, parameter estimation and error correction.
- Design of advanced compact antennas and free space electromagnetic wave propagation models for high bandwidth short distance wireless communications.
