Aidong Zhang
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
State University of New York at Buffalo
Aidong Zhang
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260
Phone: (716) 645-3180x124
Fax: (716) 645-3464
Email: azhang@cse.buffalo.edu
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/WWW/DBGROUP/
Award Number: IRI-9733730
Duration: 5/1/98--4/31/02
Title: CAREER: Consistent and Robust Retrieval, Transmission and Presentation of Multimedia Data
Multimedia, databases, presentations, transmission, retrieval, synchronization
This project aims at the effective integration of databases, multimedia and the internet for digital library applications. The research establishes an underlying framework and develops techniques for ensuring consistent and robust retrieval, transmission and presentation of multimedia data. The research involves: (i) customized presentation: develop principles to support consistent multimedia presentations based on quality of service specifications; (ii) transmission: develop adaptive end-to-end control techniques to support transmission of multimedia data over networks; (iii) retrieval: formulate a resource allocation model for a database server to allocate its resources for data retrieval; and (iv) implementation and experimentation of a distributed multimedia database prototype for educational digital libraries. The educational component of the project focuses on two objectives: development of new courses in the area of multimedia databases and digital libraries, and application of the research to the establishment of a computer-assisted learning environment for asynchronous distance learning. Through the above research and educational activities, the fundamental understanding and novel techniques can be provided to support system development. The developed framework can be readily used to facilitate student tutoring, medical training, human resource development, and asynchronous distance learning. On a broader level, the methods and experimental results arising from this research will also guide the development of distributed multimedia database systems in industrial applications.
The objective of this research is to establish an underlying framework and develop novel techniques for ensuring consistent and robust retrieval, transmission and presentation of multimedia data. This research develops a quantitative model that is characterized by a set of quality-of-service (QoS) parameters. The effectiveness of the system will be assessed by empirical study of the model and its parameters. The research and educational activities during the first year period include:
Establish a functioning prototype for supporting the consistent presentations of multimedia data in a distributed multimedia database environment.
During the second year of the project, we will develop comprehensive functions for the server and conduct examination on computer-assisted learning interactivity. The detailed plan includes:
Although the project is still at a very early stage (in year one), some promising results have been obtained. We have established a functioning prototype for supporting the consistent presentations of video, audio and slides in a distributed multimedia database environment. We have designed and implemented multimedia presentation scheduling techniques in the prototype. The consistency of the presentation has been measured by the QoS parameters. We are currently designing and implementing an initial version of the buffer strategies for end-to-end transmission control, which take into consideration the effect of delays. The performance of the mechanisms is being measured. The initial results obtained from the experiments have demonstrated that interactive presentations of multimedia data retrieved from the databases over internet are doable. The resulting presentations of educational materials can satisfy the constraints defined by the QoS parameters.
This research project establishes an underlying framework and develops techniques for effective integration of database, multimedia and Internet technologies. Such an integration will create the most powerful systems to support various digital library applications, such as education and training, Web browsing, information retrieval, electronic commerce, and distributed publishing. The system to be developed will provide an innovative environment which ensures consistent and robust retrieval, transmission and presentation of multimedia data in a distributed environment. Such an environment can be used to support sophisticated applications which require flexible and interactive construction and manipulation of data presentations from distributed multimedia databases. Experimental results on various quality-of-service guarantees arising from this research will guide the development of distributed multimedia database systems in industrial applications.
Research has been conducted to handle the storage and retrieval of continuous media data. Most of the existing research involves disk scheduling and allocation strategies. Buffer management for prefetching and maximizing buffer utilization has been investigated in the context of guaranteeing the continuity requirements of media streams. Research has also been directed toward the support of multimedia stream synchronization within operating systems and network architectures. A significant amount of work has been contributed to server design; in particular, attention has been focused on service time scheduling and admission control. Research has also centered on the network scheduling of media stream transmissions. Various QoS parameters have been incorporated into the consideration of network traffic. Several communication protocols have been proposed to support deterministic, probabilistic, or best-effort transmission of media streams over networks. In a distributed environment, collaboration between clients and servers must be addressed to support a globally integrated multimedia system. Several studies have investigated feedback strategies to maintain synchronized transmission and presentation of media streams. The multimedia server detects impending playback discontinuities at the client using feedback messages periodically sent by the client. Also, buffers and feedbacks are incorporated into the system to maintain loosely-coupled synchronization between a server and a client.
Several projects involving multimedia data management and presentation are being conducted in Purdue University (Dr. Ghafoor) and Case Western Reserved University (Dr. Ozsoyoglu).