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Limited backhaul bandwidth and blockage effects are two main factors limiting the practical deployment of millimeter wave (mmWave) networks. To tackle these issues, we study the feasibility of relaying as well as caching in mmWave networks. A user association and relaying (UAR) criterion dependent on both caching status and maximum biased received power is proposed by considering the spatial correlation caused by the coexistence of base stations (BSs) and relay nodes (RNs). Using stochastic geometry tools, we decouple the UAR and caching placement issues by analyzing the relationship between UAR probabilities and caching placement probabilities. We then optimize the formulated caching placement problem based on polyblock outer approximation by exploiting the monotonic property in the general case and utilizing convex optimization in the noise-limited case. Accordingly, we propose a BS and RN selection algorithm where caching status at BSs and maximum biased received power are jointly considered. Experimental results demonstrate a significant enhancement of backhaul offloading using the proposed algorithms, and show that deploying more RNs and increasing cache size in mmWave networks is a more cost-effective alternative than increasing BS density to achieve similar backhaul offloading performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is promising to enable growing video services with requirements of massive traffic and low latency. In this paper, we investigate a novel multi-user NOMA system design for video delivery. Different from data delivery considered in existing NOMA systems, video distortion is taken into consideration for the design and optimization of the proposed scheme. We first propose a cross-layer scalable video delivery scheme over NOMA wireless networks based on given user grouping. By adopting a semi-analytical rate distortion model for encoded video sequences and investigating the physical layer model for the multi-carrier NOMA network, the distortion-aware power allocation problem is formulated with the goal to minimize the system end-to-end distortion with quality-of-service requirements. To solve such a non-convex problem, we design an efficient algorithm by exploiting its hidden monotonic property to approximate the optimal solution. Inspired by the decoding order in NOMA, a fast algorithm is developed by combining water-filling and greedy strategies to further tame the computational complexity. Simulations results have verified the advantages of the proposed cross-layer scheme with distortion-aware power allocation algorithms, against two existing NOMA schemes and an OMA scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Cache-enabled dense small cell networks (DSCNs), energy consumption and file delivery delay are two critical performance metrics. On the other hand, power control is an essential mechanism to mitigate inter-cell interference in DSCNs. However, the impact of power control at small base stations (SBSs) on the system performance when caches are involved has not been well studied. Observing energy consumption and file delivery delay are coupled with each other in cache-enabled DSCNs, different from existing studies, we attempt to optimize these two performance metrics at the same time, taking into account sophisticated power control at SBSs. Firstly, we formulate the energy-delay optimization problem as a utility maximization problem, where cooperative power control among SBSs, file placement and user association are considered. Then, we solve the optimization problem in two stages (i.e., caching stage and delivery stage), based on the fact that caching is performed during off-peak time. At the caching stage, a local popular file placement policy is proposed by estimating user preference at each SBS. At the delivery stage, with given caching status at SBSs, the optimization problem is further decomposed by Benders’ decomposition method. An efficient algorithm is proposed to approach the optimal association and power solution by iteratively shrinking the gap of the upper and lower bounds. Finally, extensive simulations are performed to validate our analytical and algorithmic work. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms can achieve a better tradeoff between energy consumption and file delivery delay than the existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile display has become one of the most power-hungry components in mobile video viewing. Currently, mobile devices can reduce the display energy by performing dynamic brightness scaling (DBS) under the distortion constraint of video signals. We observe that there is a pitfall preventing current practice from systematic display energy reduction. In particular, existing objective DBS schemes lack direct connection to the subjective human perception on DBS-enabled videos, which is the key to achieving human-centered energy-experience optimization. To overcome this pitfall, we present CrowdDBS, a crowdsourced display energy reduction framework for mobile video viewing. CrowdDBS is empowered by a set of crowdsourcing studies that uncover the relationship between human perception and DBS frequency, magnitude, and temporal consistency, respectively. Motivated by the insights obtained from these studies, CrowdDBS employs a suit of designs and a DBS optimization framework to optimize the energy-experience tradeoff in mobile video viewing. Comprehensive experimental results and user evaluations under a variety of practical settings show that CrowdDBS can achieve 37 percent device energy reduction on average while guaranteeing satisfactory user experience in mobile video viewing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advances in wearable sensors and wireless technologies, wireless body area network (WBAN) has become a promising network to provide health applications, such as ubiquitous e-Health services and real-time health monitoring. In these WBANs, quality of service (QoS) requirements, including packet loss rate, throughput, and delay, need to be guaranteed for providing reliable and real-time data transmission even under highly dynamic environment due to human mobility and postures. Meanwhile, energy efficiency is another key factor to consider for increasing the network lifetime in such a resource-constrained network. In this paper, a transmission-rate-adaption assisted and energy-efficient resource allocation scheme is proposed in which both constraints of QoS metrics and the characteristics of dynamic links are considered. Specifically, a QoS optimization problem is formulated to optimize the transmission power and time slots for each sensor, which minimizes energy consumption subjected to the QoS constraints. Due to the dynamic link characteristics, the link quality may become poor, and then the QoS requirements of normal packets and emergency packets cannot be satisfied. Besides, the emergency packets should receive more attentions with a high priority and high QoS requirements. To guarantee the QoS requirements when the link is very poor, a transmission rate adaption policy is proposed to carefully adjust the transmission rate at each sensor to assist the QoS optimization problem, and a priority-based retransmission strategy is designed to apply the retransmission strategy to further improve the performances of the emergency packets with a high priority. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the QoS optimization problem, the proposed transmission rate adaption policy, and the priority-based retransmission strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reconstructing a full-resolution stereoscopic video from an asymmetric stereoscopic video is a challenging task. The existing approaches require depth information, which imposes an additional challenge in data acquisition. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme that is capable of obtaining super-resolution and depth estimation simultaneously from an asymmetric stereoscopic video. The proposed scheme models the video super-resolution and stereo matching with a unified energy function. Then, we apply an alternating optimization method to minimize this energy function, which can be implemented with a two-step algorithm. In the first step we calculate the initial depth map by using a region-based cooperative optimization technique while considering the temporal consistency in video. In the second step we resolve the super-resolution problem under the guidance of the depth information. It is effective because each step benefits from the additional improvement over the previous step. We iteratively update the two steps until stable depth and super-resolution results are obtained. We have conducted a series of experiments on public stereoscopic video sequences to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Both objective indexes and subjective visual comparisons verify that the proposed scheme can achieve satisfactory super-resolution results and high-quality depth map simultaneously. In particular, the subjective evaluation experiments on a 3-D monitor show that this scheme outperforms others and achieves the best visual sharpness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In space communication environments, most studies in delay tolerant networks (DTNs) adopt experimental approaches and they have shown that the utilization efficiency of link bandwidth can be affected by changing packet sizes at the bundle layer and the convergence layer. However, the lack of theoretical work makes it difficult to find the optimal packet sizes in general scenarios. In this paper, we focus on this important issue by performing a theoretical analysis to solve the packet size optimization problems in both one-hop and multihop DTNs. As our analysis is based on the widely used DTN architecture with Bundle Protocol (BP) and Licklider Transmission Protocol (LTP), the theoretical results can be applied to any DTN scenario using this architecture. We formulate packet size optimization problems in DTNs as nonconvex optimization problems. Furthermore, a goodput enhancement algorithm (GEA) is also proposed to find the optimal packet sizes in order to maximize goodput in DTNs. We conduct numerical analysis as well as simulations to validate our theoretical analysis and study the factors that determine the optimal packet sizes for BP and LTP. Numerical results show that GEA achieves significant performance improvement compared with schemes where packet size optimization on BP and LTP is not jointly considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we investigate the problem of image contrast enhancement. Most existing relevant technologies often suffer from the drawback of excessive enhancement, thereby introducing noise/artifacts and changing visual attention regions. One frequently used solution is manual parameter tuning, which is, however, impractical for most applications since it is labor intensive and time consuming. In this research, we find that saliency preservation can help produce appropriately enhanced images, i.e., improved contrast without annoying artifacts. We therefore design an automatic contrast enhancement technology with a complete histogram modification framework and an automatic parameter selector. This framework combines the original image, its histogram equalized product, and its visually pleasing version created by a sigmoid transfer function that was developed in our recent work. Then, a visual quality judging criterion is developed based on the concept of saliency preservation, which assists the automatic parameters selection, and finally properly enhanced image can be generated accordingly. We test the proposed scheme on Kodak and Video Quality Experts Group databases, and compare with the classical histogram equalization technique and its variations as well as state-of-the-art contrast enhancement approaches. The experimental results demonstrate that our technique has superior saliency preservation ability and outstanding enhancement effect. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We propose an improved coarse-grain scalable video coding (SVC) approach based on the structural similarity (SSIM) index as the visual quality criterion, aiming at maximizing the overall coding performance constrained by user-defined quality weightings for all scalable layers. First, we develop an interlayer rate-SSIM dependency model, by investigating bit rate and SSIM relationships between different layers. Second, a reduced-reference SSIM-Q model and a Laplacian R-Q model are introduced for SVC, by incorporating the characteristics of hierarchical prediction structure in each layer. Third, based on the user-defined weightings and the proposed models, we design a rate-distortion optimization approach to adaptively adjust Lagrange multipliers for all layers to maximize the overall rate-SSIM performance of the scalable encoder. Experiments with multiple layers, different layer weightings, and various videos demonstrate that the proposed framework can achieve better rate-SSIM performance than single layer optimization method, and provide better coding efficiency as compared to the conventional SVC scheme. Subjective tests further demonstrate the benefits of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research addresses the problem of robust linear video transmission over the Rayleigh fading channel, where only statistical channel state information (CSI) is available to the sender. We observe that discarding low-priority (LP) data and saving the channel uses for high-priority (HP) data can significantly improve the quality of the received video. We formulate an optimization problem that aims to minimize the total squared error of a multi-variant Gaussian random vector under the given bandwidth and power resources. To tame the complexity of this NP-hard problem, we analyze two sub-problems, namely power allocation and bandwidth allocation, and propose an iterative algorithm to approximate the solution. Subsequently, we propose a one-pass two-step fast algorithm that further reduces both algorithmic and computational complexity. A linear video transmission system is implemented based on the proposed algorithm. Simulations show that our system significantly outperforms SoftCast, and the PSNR gain at 5th percentile of 1000 test runs is between 4.0 dB and 7.5 dB under varying noise levels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a distributed robust optimization scheme to jointly optimize overall video quality and traffic performance for scalable video multirate multicast over practical wireless networks. In order to guarantee layered utility maximization, the initial nominal joint source and network optimization is defined, where each scalable layer is tailored in an incremental order and finds jointly optimal multicast paths and associated rates with network coding. To enhance the robustness of the nominal convex optimization formulation with nonlinear constraints, we reserve partial bandwidth for backup paths disjoint from the primal paths. It considers the path-overlapping allocation of backup paths for different receivers to take advantage of network coding, and takes into account the robust multipath rate-control and bandwidth reservation problem for scalable video multicast streaming when possible link failures of primary paths exist. Specifically, an uncertainty set of the wireless medium capacity is introduced to represent the uncertain and time-varying property of parameters related to the wireless channel. The targeted uncertainty in the robust optimization problem is studied in a form of protection functions with nonlinear constraints, to analyze the tradeoff between robustness and distributedness. Using the dual decomposition and primal-dual update approach, we develop a fully decentralized algorithm with regard to communication overhead. Through extensive experimental results under critical performance factors, the proposed algorithm could converge to the optimal steady-state more quickly, and adapt the dynamic network changes in an optimal tradeoff between optimization performance and robustness than existing optimization schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new video compression framework over H.264/AVC scheme that integrates our proposed structured priority belief propagation (BP)-based inpainting prediction (IP) to exploit the intrinsic nonlocal and geometric regularity in video samples. Unlike the existing edge-based inpainting adopted in lossy image coding, the optimal predictor could maintain the pixel-wise fidelity and the robust error resilience without any assistant information. Beyond the local prediction limitation of traditional intra and inter-modes, the priority BP with regularized structure priors of a spatio-temporal Markov random field is imposed on the predictor in an adaptive and more convergent sense. Specifically, the structured sparsity of the predicted macroblock region is inferred by tensor voting projected from the co-located decoded regions. In turn, the priority and visiting order of nodes are assigned according to the sets of updated beliefs as the propagation of messages. Through relatively few iterations of forward and backward process, the sparse inference of priority BP would ensure a stable marginal belief distribution on the structure and texture through updating local messages and beliefs. Within the optimal mode selection on rate-distortion optimization (RDO), the IP-mode with structured priority BP outperforms the existing vision-based approaches, and specially achieves a better objective rate-distortion performance besides visual quality. The IP-mode with structured priority BP can be applied to both I and P frames to generate low entropy residue, e.g., homogeneous visual patterns, and the computation complexity is also competitive with one iteration of sparse inference. Moreover, it behaves more resilient with an intrinsic probabilistic inference than the intra and inter-modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a joint coding/routing optimization between network lifetime and video distortion by applying information theory to wireless visual sensor networks for correlated sources. Arbitrary coding [distributed video coding and network coding (NC)] from both combinatorial optimization and information theory could make significant progress toward the performance limit and tractable. Also, multipath routing can spread energy utilization across nodes within the entire network to keep a potentially longer lifetime, and solve the wireless contention issues by the splitting traffic. The objective function not only keeps the total energy consumption of encoding power, transmission power, and reception power minimized, but ensures the information received by sink nodes to approximately reconstruct the visual field. Also, a generalized power consumption model for distributed video sources is developed, in which the coding complexity of Key frames and Wyner-Ziv frames is measured by translating specific coding behavior into energy consumption. On the basis of the distributed multiview video coding and NC-based multipath routing, the balance problem between lifetime (costs) and distortion (capacity) is modeled as an optimization formulation with a fully distributed solution. Through a primal decomposition, a two-level optimization is relaxed with Lagrangian dualization and solved by the gradient algorithm. The low-level optimization problem is further decomposed into a secondary master dual problem with four cross-layer subproblems: a rate control problem, a channel contention problem, a distortion control problem, and an energy conservation problem. The implementation of the distributed algorithm is discussed with regard to the communication overhead and dynamic network change. Simulation results validate the convergence and performance of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]