Consortium aims to make mobile video as cheap and easy as SMS

15 August 2010

Institute IMDEA Networks is to participate in MEDIEVAL, a new project that aims to enable today’s mobile internet architecture to handle the efficient distribution of high-quality video.

---

Video is the future of the internet, expected to account for nearly 90 percent of consumer traffic by 2012, with an increase in mobile traffic of more than 200 percent per annum. But today’s internet architecture—and particularly the mobile internet—wasn’t designed with video in mind. As a result it is highly inefficient where it comes to video traffic, leading to a low quality of experience (QoE) that isn’t conducive to consumer adoption. With this in mind, Institute IMDEA Networks, a research institute backed by the Madrid Regional Government, has announced its participation in the MEDIEVAL project (Multimedia Transport for Mobile Video Applications), which aims to evolve the current internet architecture for efficient video traffic support.

Institute IMDEA Networks’ contribution, carried out jointly with Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, will focus on transport optimisation: introducing an integrated system view at each protocol layer, evaluating cross-layer interactions and assessing system performance in a network-wide context. The Institute will introduce technical solutions for peer-to-peer-based content delivery networks (CDNs), dynamic rate-control and caching schemes and mechanisms for cost-effective content delivery, among other elements, all carried out with a view to enabling a high QoE for mobile video users. Institute IMDEA Networks believes that the global perspective adopted by MEDIEVAL represents a significant evolution over the existing scientific state-of-the-art.

MEDIEVAL’s goal is to help make video as cheap and simple to use on mobile networks as voice or SMS are today—for integration into social networks, communicating with friends, following TV programs or personal broadcasting to an interest group. The project, planned for completion in June 2013, combines the integrated perspectives of mobile operators DoCoMo, Telecom Italia and Portugal Telecom Inovação, an innovative internet broadcasting firm, a major manufacturer and leading research institutes and academic partners.

UC3M: Boletín Parque Científico TECNOLEGANÉS: TRANSFERENCIA de Conocimiento y Tecnología > Agenda y Noticias de Innovación: Institute IMDEA Networks participa, en colaboración con la UC3M, en dos nuevos proyectos que supondrán un avance para el futuro de Internet (in Spanish only).

     

(Overview and reference model from MEDIEVAL)