UMA-based wireless and mobile video delivery architecture

In this paper we propose a conceptual model for describing the network conditions under which the multimedia data is being transmitted, as well as the modality of the device which receives the data. We present an architecture for adaptation of multimedia data to such wireless network conditions and device capabilities, under constraints imposed by user preferences and multimedia content, to ensure effective, meaningful, and acceptable delivery of video data to mobile users. The adaptability is achieved through careful application of a combination of off-line and on-line reductions to the video streams. In doing so, we make use of the concept of descriptor schemes for describing the content of video data, and its lendability to different kinds of reductions [1]. The architecture consists of an MPEG-7 server in the fixed network, and an MPEG-7 player on the mobile host. In addition, an encoder/decoder layer is used to perform physical frame bit reductions on transcoded video frames. The server also maintains index structures and a programmable two-dimensional matrix of reductions. An offline packager module is included with the server, which packages all the MPEG-7 data with the video when the video is first registered with the database.