Tutorials

Sunday, January 8, 2005

Tutorial I - canceled
8:00am - 12:00nn
Presenter: Professor Danny H.K. Tsang
Title: Content Delivery and P2P Networks

The goal of this tutorial is to introduce to the audience the basic principles behind content delivery networks (CDN) peer to peer (P2P) networks that have gained widespread popularity. The application of CDN began with speeding up the delivery of web objects while that of P2P networks initially targeted for file sharing. Both have now been extended to include real-time video/audio streaming and video on demand (VoD). The tutorial will also discuss about this latest development.

Tutorial II - canceled
8:00am - 12:00nn
Presenter: Dr. Dorgham Sisalem, Sven Ehlert
Title: Deploying VoIP Services with SIP

In the last two years, VoIP has moved from hype to reality. While initial interest has come form large enterprises wishing to reduce their communication costs, consumer market has taken the lead now. VoIP services are being increasingly offered to end customers in the form of a low cost and easy to use service. In this tutorial we will look at the basic of the protocols on which VoIP services are built, namely the session initiation protocol (SIP). Then VoIP service architectures as well as deployment issues such as NAT traversal, security, denial of service and management will be discussed. Finally, next advances in SIP and its enhancement for next generation networks will be presented.

Tutorial III - canceled
8:00am - 12:00nn
Presenter: Prof. Giovanni E. Corazza
Title: Mobile Broadcasting

Mobile broadcasting (MB), intended as the delivery of multimedia content to mobile terminals, is today an extremely hot technical issue and market opportunity for both cellular operators and traditional broadcasters, investing both satellite and terrestrial communication networks communities. MB applications target horizontal mass-markets, and are expected to have a very important impact in terms of diffusion of value-added services. Several standards and technologies are being developed to take full advantage of this ripe opportunity, among which: MBMS within 3GPP, DVB-H in the DVB forum, S-DMB within the satellite community and the ETSI S-UMTS group. All of these standards pursue the identification of the optimum provision mechanism for multimedia broadcast services, while preserving compliance with existing system architectures and air interfaces. However, they all have advantages and disadvantages which render their mutual comparison a non-trivial task. The tutorial aims at describing the various provision mechanisms for MB services, and addresses a comparison between the alternative competing solutions.

Tutorial IV
1:00 - 5:30pm
Presenter: Prof. Ahmet M. Eskicioglu
Title: Digital rights management of multimedia data: solutions challenges, and future needs

A digital home network is a cluster of digital audio/visual (A/V) devices. Copyrighted digital multimedia content may be delivered to the consumers from a number of sources including the Internet, and satellite, terrestrial or cable television systems. It may also be made available as prepackaged media at retail stores. Before releasing their content for distribution, the content owners may require protection by specifying certain access conditions and digital rights. Recently, two fundamental groups of technologies, encryption and watermarking, have been identified for protecting copyrighted multimedia content in digital distribution networks. Three major industries have a vital interest in this problem: The motion picture industry, the consumer electronics (CE) industry, and the information technology (IT) industry. This tutorial is an overview of the work done for protecting the content owners investment in intellectual property.

Tutorial V
1:00 - 5:30pm
Presenter: Dr. Swarup Acharya, Dr. Anurag Srivastava
Title: IPTV Technologies and Deployment Challenges

IPTV, or, Television over IP, is generating huge interest in the telecom industry lately. Telecom service providers (Telcos) view IPTV as a ticket to compete against the Cable industry by offering television services over Fiber/DSL lines. By offering video over their access infrastructure, Telcos hope to match the voice, video and data (“triple-play”) offering of Cable providers. However, unlike Cable television (CATV) systems that are typically analog transmissions on a broadcast medium, IPTV architectures deliver digital television using IP-multicast over point-to-point hybrid Fiber/DSL infrastructure. Unlike the more mature CATV infrastructure, IPTV leverages the most recent advances in networking and video compression technologies that while enabling more efficient networks, is also causing Telcos growing pains in field deployments.

In this tutorial, we will provide an overview of the network architectures and technologies that comprise an end-to-end IPTV system. As appropriate, we will highlight the various tradeoffs (e.g., channel change latency vis-à-vis compression technology) and compare it with the CATV approach. We will focus on hardware and software technologies from the service provider core to the home --- multicast transport, DSL technologies, MPEG standards and home-networking requirements such as the IPTV set-top box. We will also review the regulatory issues faced by Telcos relating to unbundling of their access infrastructure and statewide franchisee agreements. Since IPTV may not only be limited to Fiber/DSL, we briefly highlight competitive threats from emerging technologies such as Broadband over Power Lines. Finally, we describe the various lifestyle services such as “CallerId-on-TV” and converged voice-video applications that provides IPTV its cutting-edge differentiation.

Tutorial VI
1:00 - 5:30pm
Presenter: Prof. Torsten Braun
Title: Wireless Sensor Networks: A Systems View

The tutorial addresses systems issues in wireless sensor networks. After an introduction to into general features of sensor nodes such as energy consumption issues we study the requirements on sensor networks from various applications. Several research and prototype sensor hardware platforms have been developed during the last years. We discuss several classification schemes and examples of those classes. Special operating systems for sensor nodes need to be developed. Some of them borrow mechanisms from traditional operating systems; others follow a component-based approach. On top of operating systems middleware is required to support sensor node programmability. Concepts such as virtual machines, agents, and database models will be presented. Finally, we investigate how time synchronization and localization of sensor nodes can be supported.