Enabler for Next-Generation Mobile Video Applications

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The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard under development is the next-generation video compression standard, which is destined to revolutionise the world of video applications thanks to the expected high compression efficiency compared with the current standard. Nevertheless, to turn the vision into reality, substantial research efforts are necessitated since HEVC is still at its early standardisation stage and there is little research on networked HEVC applications. The proposed project targets mobile HEVC video delivery in an emerging and challenging networking paradigm, multihomed mobile networks, which are moving networks with a number of mobile users onboard (e.g., passengers on public transport vehicles). A multihomed mobile network has access to multiple complementary wireless networks such as 3G and beyond, WiFi and WiMAX, each of which provides a different network path to onboard multihomed mobile routers managing the multihoming and the mobility of the whole moving network. Compared with individual multihomed mobile hosts, a distinctive advantage of a multihomed mobile network is that the mobile users' devices do not need being multihomed or mobility aware. Such multihoming and mobility transparency substantially reduces the requirements on users' devices and the costs for deploying and operating such a system. The proposed research will attempt to enable bi-directional real-time video transmission between the mobile users within a multihomed mobile network and the infrastructure to support various applications and services for business, entertainment, safety, security or other purposes. A typical application scenario is in the public transportation context. In this case, the onboard passengers receive high-quality downlink HEVC-based video streamed from an HEVC media server. Meanwhile, the live onboard scenes are captured by a camera, encoded by an HEVC encoder, and streamed upwards to a monitoring station for public security and incident management. It is expected that the mobile user's quality of experience (QoE) will be significantly improved compared with latest standards H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and Scalable Video Coding (SVC) through the proposed research. The proposed research can be easily adopted in a range of application scenarios such as intelligent transportation systems, emergency/urgency management, telemedicine, personal area networks, and home and camping entertainment. Therefore, there is a strong technological and economic need for further research into the theory and application of the proposed topic. Moreover, joint contributions with Qualcomm to the JCT-VC meetings will enable us to set benchmarks in mobile HEVC applications and contribute to the standardisation of HEVC, which can lead to a long-lasting global impact. Dissemination and exploitation plans will promote the research outcome to the academic community as well as companies (such as AIMS (INT) Ltd., another partner of the project) related to video networking applications to exploit potential commercial product development.