Projects

Betsy project description

Acronym

Betsy

Name

BEing on Time Saves energY

Duration

2004-2007

Keywords

Wireless networks, WLAN, MPEG, wireless video, mobile communication, QoS, hand-held devices, real-time streaming, energy reduction, system optimisation

Goal

The aim of the BETSY project is to have multimedia streams on wireless hand-held devices seamlessly adapted to fluctuating network conditions and available terminal resources while reducing the energy consumption of the stream processing. This way the user can enjoy true multimedia experiences with freedom of movement in a networked home or at any hot-spot.

To achieve this, we need to be able to make trade-offs between the use and consumption of network and terminal resources, such as bandwidth use, CPU consumption, memory needed and power consumption by the terminal, while guaranteeing end-to-end timeliness - required for streaming data. The results of the BETSY project will make this possible.

Description

Wireless multimedia streaming on hand-held, mobile or otherwise battery operated devices will be a major technology underlying the next generation information and entertainment appliances. From watching small video clips on your mobile device to playing live games with other people on the bus or looking at the latest news bulletin on your palm while waiting for your plane to arrive, the possible user applications are almost endless. The multimedia market traditionally consisted of closed (rather fixed) boxes, with a few battery operated mobile devices such as the Walkman, but the market is now expanding its scope towards one where multimedia content can be retrieved from any place at any time.

Timing requirements of multimedia systems change from a closed-box situation to the need for end-to-end timing specification and enforcement. Also when we look at a networked system consisting of multiple embedded devices, the question comes to mind how we can optimise the resource use, such as CPU power, network bandwidth, memory use and the power consumption over the complete system.

As many wireless hand-held and mobile devices are short on resources and especially on energy, because they are battery operated. Trade-offs are made already during the design stage but also in an improvised way during their run-time. This becomes vital for optimal system performance and with that an optimal user experience for a reasonable cost.

TU/e will focus in this project on formal modeling and analysis of stream based applications and architectures to model system-wide resource usage trade-offs. A generic resource model is sought, that enables tradeoffs over a heterogeneous collection of components. An abstract encoding of the trade-offs can be used to make decision at run-time. Moreover, the composition of single device or component tradeoffs to global, end-to-end tradeoffs will be studied based on the concept of Pareto points.