Dynamic Adaptation for Streaming Multimedia Content in Wireless Environment

The variations in terminal and access network capabilities as well as the dynamic nature of wireless connections poses significant challenges and hurdles to providers of multimedia streaming services. In this paper, we present a framework based on Digital Item Adaptation (DIA) technologies that automatically adapts to scalable multimedia resources like the latest MPEG-4 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) systems, in an efficient and transparent way to the user. In this context, we include terminal and network capabilities. A server side adaptation engine reacts to context changes by dynamically taking decisions and accordingly modifying the bitstream adaptation.

Furthermore, proxy adaptations can be used to manage QoS parameters based on the prevailing environment (capacity of terminal or network) or to customize (or extend) the functionalities of the application.