Agent-based subsystem for multimedia communications

There are several issues in multimedia communications, such as resource allocation, quality-of-service (QoS) routing, synchronisation, playout compensation and so on, which affect the continuous and smooth running of a multimedia application. The Internet demands the design of flexible and adaptable multimedia services so as to offer better quality presentations to the user. In this context, agent technology is emerging as a promising solution to provide flexible and adaptable services in distributed environments. The authors propose a subsystem called Protocol Engineering and Technology unit – Agent-based Subsystem for MultimediA Communications (PET-ASMAC) at the client side, which is an intelligent multimedia communication assistant to facilitate multimedia presentation to Internet users. The PETASMAC comprises a set of static and mobile agents, which perform certain autonomous tasks (QoS routing, resource allocation, synchronisation and playout) that satisfy the full-service requirements of an application, and coordinate with each other to provide smooth and continuous multimedia presentations. PET-ASMAC is simulated in several network scenarios to evaluate its effectiveness. The subsystem considers presentations from a single server to a client. However, it can be easily extended for multipoint-to-point communication. The results are encouraging and the observed benefits of the agent technology in multimedia communications are flexibility, adaptability, customisability, maintainability, re-usability and support to component-based software engineering.