Application Requirements and QoS Negotiation in Multimedia Systems

The Quality of Service (QoS) concept is of central importance in the context of communication protocols for multimedia systems. Generally, multimedia systems comprise the following functional units: networks, end-to-end protocols, data management systems, applications, human-computer interfaces, and operating systems. Obviously, the entire system is influencing QoS that is visible to human users at the human computer interface. With respect to application requirements and QoS negotiation, this complex system has to be partitioned into two parts: (1) user, HCI, and application which determine application requirements; and (2) communication system, data management system, and operating system that realize a certain QoS. We propose a specification method for application requirements as a Vector Maximum Problem (VMP). Such specification enables the platform related part of the multimedia system to decide on resource usage. Thus, applications do not have to consider available resources, are independent of particular environments, and resource utilization can be optimized.