DISTRIBUTED MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS

Lecture 10: Multimedia Communication Systems

10.1Introduction
Welcome you to tenth lecture on multimedia communication systems. The consideration
of multimedia applications supports the view that local systems expand toward
distributed solutions. Applications such as kiosks, multimedia mail, collaborative work
systems, virtual reality applications and others require high-speed networks with a high
transfer rate and communication systems with adaptive, lightweight transmission
protocols on top of the networks. From the communication perspective, we divide the
higher layers of the Multimedia Communication System (MCS) into two architectural
subsystems: an application subsystem and a transport subsystem.
10.2 Lecture objectives
At the end of this lecture you will be able:
i) To understand the various layers of communication subsystem
ii) The transport subsystem and its features
iii) To understand group communication architecture
iv) Concepts behind conferencing
v) Enumerate the concepts of Session management
10.3 Lecture Outline
Application Subsystem
Collaborative Computing
The current infrastructure of networked workstations and PCs, and the availability of
audio and video at these end-points, makes it easier for people to cooperate and bridge
space and time. In this way, network connectivity and end-point integration of
multimedia provides users with a collaborative computing environment. Collaborative
computing is generally known as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).
There are many tools for collaborative computing, such as electronic mail, bulletin boards
(e.g., Usenet news), screen sharing tools (e.g., Show Me from Sunsoft), text-based
conferencing systems(e.g., Internet Relay Chat, CompuServe, American Online),
telephone conference systems, conference rooms (e.g., Video Window from Bellcore),

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and video conference systems (e.g., MBone tools nv, vat). Further, there are many
implemented CSCWsystems that unify several tools, such as Rapport from AT&T,
MERMAID from NEC and others.

Collaborative Dimensions
Electronic collaboration can be categorized according to three main parameters:
time, user scale and control. Therefore, the collaboration space can be partitioned into a
three-dimensional space.

Time
With respect to time, there are two modes of cooperative work: asynchronous and
synchronous. Asynchronous cooperative work specifies processing activities that do not
happen at the same time; the synchronous cooperative work happens at the same time.

User Scale
The user scale parameter specifies whether a single user collaborates with another user
or a group of more that two users collaborate together. Groups can be further classified
as follows:
A group may be static or dynamic during its lifetime. A group is static if its
participating members are pre-determined and membership does not change
during the activity. A group is dynamic if the number of group members varies
during the collaborative activity, i.e., group members can join or leave the activity
at any time.
Group members may have different roles in the CSCW, e.g., a member of a group (if
he or she is listed in the group definition), a participant of a group activity (if
he or she successfully joins the conference), a conference initiator, a
conference chairman, a token holder or an observer.
Groups may consist of members who have homogeneous or heterogeneous or
heterogeneous characteristics and requirements of their collaborative environment.
Control

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Control during collaboration can be centralized or distributed. Centralized control means

that there is a chairman (e.g., main manger) who controls the collaborative work and
every group member (e.g., user agent) reports to him or her. Distributed control means
that every group member has control over his/her own tasks in the collaborative work
and distributed control protocols are in place to provide consistent collaboration. Other
partition parameter may include locality, and collaboration awareness. Locality partition
means that collaboration can occur either in the same place (e.g., a group meeting in an
officer or conference room) or among users located in different place through tele-
collaboration. Group communication systems can be further categorized into computer
augmented collaboration systems, where collaboration is emphasized, and collaboration
augmented computing systems, where the concentrations are on computing.

Group Communication Architecture

Group communication (GC) involves the communication of multiple users in a
synchronous or an asynchronous mode with centralized or distributed control. A group
communication architecture consists of a support model, system model and interface
model. The GC support model includes group communication agents that communicate via
a multi-point multicast communication network as shown in following Figure. Group
communication agents may use the following for their collaboration:
Group Rendezvous
Group rendezvous denotes a method which allows one to organize meetings, and to get
information about the group, ongoing meetings and other static and dynamic information.
Shared Applications
Application sharing denotes techniques which allow one to replicate information to
multiple users simultaneously. The remote users may point to interesting aspects (e.g., via
tele-pointing) of the information and modify it so that all users can immediately see the
updated information (e.g., joint editing). Shared applications mostly belong to
collaboration transparent applications.
Conferencing

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Conferencing is a simple form of collaborative computing. This service provides the

management of multiple users for communicating with each other using multiple media.
Conferencing applications belong to collaboration-aware applications.

Conferencing
Conferencing supports collaborative computing and is also called synchronous
telecollaboration. Conferencing is a management service that controls the communication
among multiple users via multiple media, such as video and audio, to achieve
simultaneous face-to-face communication. More precisely, video and audio have the
following purposes in a tele-conferencing system:
Video is used in technical discussions to display view-graph and to indicate how many
users are still physically present at a conference. For visual support, workstations, PCs or
video walls can be used. For conferences with more than three or four participants, the
screen resources on a PC or workstation run out quickly, particularly if other
applications, such as shared editors or drawing spaces, are used. Hence, mechanisms
which quickly resize individual images should be used. Conferencing services control a
conference (i.e., a collection of shared state information such as who is participating in
the conference, conference name, start of the conference, policies associated with the
conference, etc,) Conference control includes several functions:
Establishing a conference, where the conference participants agree upon a common
state, such as identity of a chairman (moderator), access rights (floor control) and audio
encoding. Conference systems may perform registration, admission, and negotiation
services during the conference establishment phase, but they must be flexible and allow
participants to join and leave individual media sessions or the whole conference. The
flexibility depends on the control model.
Closing a conference.
Adding new users and removing users who leave the conference.
Conference states can be stored (located) either on a central machine (centralized
control), where a central application acts as the repository for all information
related to the conference, or in a distributed fashion.

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Session Management
Session management is an important part of the multimedia communication architecture. It is
the core part which separates the control, needed during the transport, from the actual
transport. Session management is extensively studied in the collaborative computing area;
therefore we concentrate on architectural and management issues in this area.

Architecture
A session management architecture is built around an entity-session manager which
separates the control from the transport. By creating a reusable session manager, which
is separated from the user-interface, conference-oriented tools avoid a duplication of
their effort. The session control architecture consists of the following components:
Session Manager
Session manager includes local and remote functionalities. Local functionalities
may include
(1) Membership control management, such as participant authentication or presentation
of coordinated user interfaces;
(2) Control management for shared workspace, such as floor control
(3) Media control management, such as intercommunication among media agents
or synchronization
(4) Configuration management, such as an exchange of interrelated QoS parameters of
selection of appropriate services according to QoS; and (5) Conference control
management, such as an establishment, modification and a closing of a conference.
Media agents
Media agents are separate from the session manager and they are not responsible for
decisions specific to each type of media. The modularity allows replacement of
agents. Each agent performs its own control mechanism over the particular medium,
such as mute, unmute, change video quality, start sending, stop sending, etc.
Shared Workspace Agent
The shared workspace agent transmits shared objects (e.g., telepointer coordinate,
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graphical or textual object) among the shared application.

Session Control
Each session is described through the session state. This state information is either private
or shared among all session participants. Dependent on the functions, which an
application required and a session control provides, several control mechanisms are
embedded in session management:
Floor control: In a shared workspace, the floor control is used to provide access to the
shared workspace. The floor control in shared application is often used to maintain
data consistency.
Conference Control: In conferencing applications, Conference control is used.
Media control: This control mainly includes a functionality such as the synchronization
of media streams.
Configuration Control: Configuration control includes a control of media
quality, QOS handling, resource availability and other system components to
provide a session according to user’s requirements.
Membership control: This may include services, for example invitation to a
session, registration into a session, modification of the membership during
the session etc

10.4 End of lecture activities (self –tests)