Reconfigurable Service Composition and Categorization for Power-Aware Mobile Computing

The requirement of agile adaptation to varying resource constraints in mobile systems motivates the use of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which can support the composition of two or more services to form a complex service. In this paper, we propose SOA-based middleware to support QoS control of mobile applications and to configure an energy-efficient service composition graph. We categorize services into two layers:functionality-centric services, which are connected to create a complex service to meet the user's intentions, and resource-centric services, which undertake distributed functionality-centric services in a way that increases the success rate of service composition while reducing contention at specific service nodes. We also present a service routing algorithm to balance the resource consumption of service providers on a service-overlay network. Through simulation of power-aware service composition using a realistic model based on ns-2 and traced data, we demonstrate that our approach can help both the mobile devices and the servers in a service-overlay network to reduce energy consumption without an increase in response time.     

Burst Mode Bandwidth Allocation for Real-Time Messages in IEEE 802.12 Networks

In IEEE 802.12 network, a repeater arbitrates among transmission requests on a round robin basis. A node can transmit a packet only when it is granted by the repeater. Recently, the IEEE 802.12 Committee approved a burst mode in which a node can transmit multiple packets per grant. In burst mode a bandwidth, or the number of packets per grant should be allocated taking into account the timing constraints of real-time messages. This paper proposes bandwidth allocation algorithms based on the burst mode to guarantee the deadlines of periodic real-time messages. Once the bandwidth of each node is derived from the lengths and deadlines of periodic messages, a node is allowed to transmit packets up to the allocated bandwidth per grant. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms providemuch higher guarantee ratio and graceful degradation for heavy network load, compared with the existing approaches.     

URECA: Efficient Resource Location Middleware for Ubiquitous Environment

We describe an effiective resource location framework for ubiquitous computing environments populated by a diverse set of networks,devices,services and computational entities. Our framework provides context adaptation with the aid of a middleware service to improve the quality of resource location. A resource location protocol suitable to each type of network locates resource effiectively by means of dynamic reconfiguration to the current context. Our framework is also refined by support for interoperability between different types of resource location protocols occurring across a hybrid ubiquitous network. These characteristics also reduce the control overhead for resource location,saving resource,decreasing latency and permitting a considerable degree of scalability.     

On the effect of Reed–Solomon coding with maximum block interleaving on MPEG-4 FGS video quality in 3G broadcasting

In Broadcast and Multicast Services (BCMCS) for CDMA2000 networks, Reed–Solomon (RS) coding is applied to the layers above the turbo code. An additional block interleaving mechanism improves the performance of RS coding when there are long bursts of errors. We propose a performance model of RS coding for varying conditions of Rayleigh fading on the broadcast channel with the maximum amount of block interleaving, and verify this analytic model by comparing its results with a simulation. Evaluating the quality of the resulting MPEG-4 FGS (fine granular scalability) video demonstrates the effectiveness of RS coding in achieving high perceived video quality.     

Experimental Assessment of the Period Calibration Method: A Case Study

In this paper we present an experimental evaluation of the period calibration method (PCM) which was developed in Gerber et al. (1994, 1995) as a systematic design methodology for real-time systems. The objective of this experimental study is to assess design alternatives integrated into the method and their performance implication on resultant systems built via the PCM. Such design alternatives include scheduling jitter, sensor-to-output latency, intertask communication schemes, and system utilization. For this study, we have chosen a computerized numerical control (CNC) machine as our target real-time system, and built a realistic controller and a plant simulator. We show the detailed development process of the CNC controller and report its performance. The performance results were extracted from a controlled series of more than hundred test controllers obtained by varying four test variables. This study unveils several weaknesses of the PCM: (1) the communication scheme built into PCM incurs a large latency though average sensor-to-output latency is one of the most dominating factors in determining control quality; (2) scheduling jitter is taken seriously in PCM though its effect appears only when average sensor-to-output latency is sufficiently small; (3) loop processing periods are not properly optimized for control quality though they are another dominating factor of performance; and (4) transient overloads are not considered at all in PCM, even though they can seriously damage the performance of a system. Based on these results, we propose a new communication scheme and a transient overload handling technique for the improved period calibration method.     

Threaded Prefetching: A New Instruction Memory Hierarchy for Real-Time Systems

Cache memories have been extensively used to bridge the speed gap between high speed processors and relatively slow main memory. However, they are not widely used in real-time systems due to their unpredictable performance. This paper proposes an instruction prefetching scheme called threaded prefetching as an alternative to instruction caching in real-time systems. In the proposed threaded prefetching, an instruction block pointer called a thread is assigned to each instruction memory block and is made to point to the next block on the worst case execution path that is determined by a compile-time analysis. Also, the thread is not updated throughout the entire program execution to guarantee predictability. This paper also compares the worst case performances of various previous instruction prefetching schemes with that of the proposed threaded prefetching. By analyzing several benchmark programs, we show that the worst case performance of the proposed scheme is significantly better than those of previous instruction prefetching schemes. The results also show that when the block size is large enough the worst case performance of the proposed threaded prefetching scheme is almost as good as that of an instruction cache with 100 % hit ratio.     

A Design Framework for Multi-Resolution Video Servers

Video can be encoded into multiple-resolution format in nature. A multi-resolution or scalable video stream is a video sequence encoded such that subsets of the full resolution video bit stream can be decoded to recreate lower resolution video streams. Employing scalable video enables a video server to provide multiple resolution services for a variety of clients with different decoding capabilities and network bandwidths connected to the server. The inherent advantages of the multi-resolution video server include: heterogeneous client support, storage efficiency, adaptable service, and interactive operations support.For designing a video server, several issues should be dealt with under a unified framework including data placement/retrieval, buffer management, and admission control schemes for deterministic service guarantee. In this paper, we present a general framework for designing a large-scale multi-resolution video server. First, we propose a general multi-resolution video stream model which can be implemented by various scalable compression techniques. Second, given the proposed stream model, we devise a hybrid data placement scheme to store scalable video data across disks in the server. The scheme exploits both concurrency and parallelism offered by striping data across the disks and achieves the disk load balancing during any resolution video service. Next, the retrieval of multi-resolution video is described. The deterministic access property of the placement scheme permits the retrieval scheduling to be performed on each disk independently and to support interactive operations (e.g. pause, resume, slow playback, fastforward and rewind) simply by reconstructing the input parameters to the scheduler. We also present an efficient admission control algorithm which precisely estimates the actual disk workload for the given resolution services and hence permits the buffer requirement to be much smaller. The proposed schemes are verified through detailed simulation and implementation.     

Reduced Data Rates for Energy-Efficient Reed–Solomon FEC on Fading Channels

In the CDMA2000 1xEV-DO broadcast service, Reed-Solomon (RS) coding is applied at the medium access control (MAC) layer. Long bursts of errors are corrected by an additional block interleaving mechanism, which improves the performance of RS coding by increasing the time diversity. This is achieved by increasing the width of the error control block (ECB) to convert error bursts into sparse patterns. On the assumption that the number of ECBs transmitted over the air channel in a given interval of time remains constant, we propose performance and energy models of RS decoding under varying conditions of Rayleigh fading on the broadcast channel, which allows for varying levels of block interleaving. Evaluation of this model shows that a higher data rate for the MAC payload and more efficient recovery from bursty errors can be achieved by increasing the level of block interleaving, although it increases the energy consumption. We therefore make the ECB as small as we can without incurring significant performance reduction by sacrificing the data rate to an extent that depends on the channel conditions. We suggest a way of choosing an adequate but energy-efficient level of ECB interleaving and, thus, determine the data rate. Our approach is effective for energy-constrained mobile devices running multimedia applications, which benefit from an increase in energy efficiency, and can tolerate a certain level of packet errors and a reduction in data rate.