Experimental Investigation of Audio and Video Quality in Multi - Video Streaming Environments

This work addresses the problems of sending live media, in the form of audio and video over heterogenous networks. Specifically we address streaming multiple video streams in a wireless network and streaming audio in a multi-video tele-immersive environment. In the wireless domain, we explore the use of a user level Bandwidth Manager as QoS control to aid the transfer of adaptive video. We implement this system and test it on a linux based wireless testbed. We test the performance of multi video streaming in this environment. The results shows the advantages as well as some of the disadvantages of user space QoS control. We also create a auction based migration scheme to ensure that QoS control is always available in the ad hoc network. Since the ad hoc network is made up of strangers, we design an incentive based mechanism to ensure cooperation. Towards this end we design and implement a Vickerey auction based migration scheme. In the multi-video tele-immersive environment, we investigate the addition of audio to facilitate remote collaboration. We develop a H.323 based conferencing application to achieve this. We also work on the problem of audio-video synchronization and design a simple scheme which has good results.