This paper proposes and investigates a multiplexing and error control scheme for Body Area Network (BAN). In February 2012, an international standard of WBAN, IEEE802.15.6, was published and it supports error control schemes. This standard also defines seven different QoS modes however, how to utilize them is not clearly specified. In this paper, an optimization method of the QoS is proposed. In order to utilize the QoS parameters, a multiplexing scheme is introduced. Then, the Hybrid ARQ in IEEE 802.15.6 is modified to employ decomposable codes and Weldon's ARQ protocol for more associations with channel conditions and required QoS. The proposed scheme has higher flexibility for optimizing the QoS parameters according to the required QoS.

Multi-sensory communications with haptics attract a number of researchers in recent years. To provide services of the communications with high realistic sensations, the researchers focus on the quality of service (QoS) control, which keeps as high quality as possible, and the quality of experience (QoE) assessment, which is carried out to investigate the influence on user perception and to verify the effectiveness of QoS control. In this paper, we report the present status of studies on multi-sensory communications with haptics. Then, we divide applications of the communications into applications in virtual environments and those in real environments, and we mainly describe collaborative work and competitive work in each of the virtual and real environments. We also explain QoS control which is applied to the applications and QoE assessment carried out in them. Furthermore, we discuss the future directions of studies on multi-sensory communications.

Recently, network coding (NC) has been popularly applied to wireless networks in order to improve scarce wireless capacity. In wireless LANs, NC can be applied to packet retransmission in which multiple packets can be simultaneously transmitted by a single transmission trial at a base station (BS). In this paper, we assume wireless LANs with QoS functionality and propose adaptive cooperation between NC and IEEE 802.11e EDCA. In EDCA, when network load is high, QoS is significantly degraded even for high priority class. To solve this, existing methods improve backoff control, and decrease packet loss caused by collision. However, this cannot prevent packet loss caused by channel fading. In the proposed cooperation between NC and EDCA, QoS of all priority classes is improved from the aspect of efficient loss recovery. Unlike NC method with no QoS control, we encounter transmission scheduling problem among an NC packet, a single lost packet and a new packet. Moreover, in the constitution of packets encoded into NC packet, packet's intrinsic priority should be considered. Therefore, we propose how to schedule the packets to be transmitted in BS, and how to constitute NC packets to be encoded. Finally, we show the effectiveness of the proposed method by extensive computer simulations.

This paper proposes an adaptive resource allocation for multi-tier computing systems to guarantee a fair QoS level under resource constraints of tiers. We introduce a multi-tier computing architecture which consists of a group of resource managers and an arbiter. Resource allocation of each client is managed by a dedicated resource manager. Each resource manager updates resources allocated to subtasks of its client by locally exchanging QoS levels with other resource managers. An arbiter compensates the updated resources to avoid overload conditions in tiers. Based on the compensation by the arbiter, the subtasks of each client are executed in corresponding tiers. We derive sufficient conditions for the proposed resource allocation to achieve a fair QoS level avoiding overload conditions in all tiers with some assumptions on a QoS function and a resource consumption function of each client. We conduct a simulation to demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation can adaptively achieve a fair QoS level without causing any overload condition.

A consensus problem has been studied in many fundamental and application fields to analyze coordinated behavior in multi-agent systems. In a consensus problem, it is usually assumed that a state of each agent is scalar and all agents have an identical linear consensus protocol. We present a consensus problem of multi-agent systems where each agent has multiple state variables and a performance value evaluated by a nonlinear performance function according to its current state. We derive sufficient conditions for agents to achieve consensus on the performance value using an algebraic graph theory and the mean value theorem. We also consider an application of a performance consensus problem to resource allocation in soft real-time systems so as to achieve a fair QoS (Quality of Service) level.

In this paper, we propose a novel QoS (Quality of Service) estimation scheme for JPEG 2000 coded image at RTP (realtime transfer protocol) layer without decoding the image. QoS of streaming video is estimated in view of several points, such as, transmission delay, or quality of received images. In this paper, we evaluate the QoS in terms of quality of received images. Generally, RTP is carried on top of UDP, and hence, quality of transmitted images could be degraded due to packet loss. To estimate the quality of received JPEG 2000 coded image without decoding, we use RTP header extension in order to send additional information to the receiver. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by the computer simulations.

In wireless local area networks (WLANs), the necessity of quality-of-service (QoS) control for uplink flows is increasing because interactive applications are becoming more popular. Fairness between flows transmitted by stations with different physical transmission rates must be ensured in QoS control for link-adaptive WLANs, which are widely used nowadays. We propose a novel distributed access scheme called QC-DCA to satisfy these requirements. QC-DCA adaptively controls the parameters of carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). QC-DCA has two QoS control functions: guarantee and classification. QC-DCA guarantees target throughputs and packet delays by quickly adjusting CSMA/CA parameters. In QoS classification, the difference of throughputs and packet delays between different QoS classes is maintained. These two functions allow QC-DCA to suppress the unfairness caused by differences of transmission rates in the physical layer. We evaluated the throughput and delay performances of our scheme using computer simulations. The results show the viability of our scheme.

We present a design of knowledge circulation framework for quality of service (QoS) control of multimedia communication service (MCS). This framework aims to realizing user oriented and resource aware MCS by enabling effective placement of QoS control knowledge on the network. In this paper, we propose a conceptual design of the framework with knowledge-based multiagent system. In this framework, QoS control knowledge is actively circulated by getting on the agents. We implement a prototype of real-time bidirectional MCS (videoconference system) using this framework, and show initial experiment results using it to evaluate the effectiveness of the framework.

We present a design and implementation of a QoS control mechanism in an Adaptive Multimedia Communication System (AMCS) using multiagent-based computing technology. In this paper, we first define functional requirements for AMCS. Subsequently we describe the design and implementation of AMCS with a knowledge-based multiagent framework to fulfill the functional requirements. Moreover we evaluate the adaptability of the prototype systems of AMCS with the operational situations observed in its experiments. From the result of the experiments, we conclude that the multiagent-based design and implementation is reasonable for construction of AMCS.

This paper proposes an efficient random access channel (RACH) transmission method that utilizes soft-combined consecutively retransmitted message data packets according to the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for broadband multi-carrier/DS-CDMA (MC/DS-CDMA) in the reverse link. In the proposed scheme, the relative transmission power of a message from that of a successfully detected preamble for non-real time (NRT) type traffic data is significantly reduced by soft-combining several retransmitted message data packets thanks to time diversity since the delay requirement is relaxed. Meanwhile, for real time (RT) type traffic data, the relative transmission power of the message from that of the detected preamble is increased in order to reduce the packet error rate with a limited number of retransmissions. Simulation results elucidate that the total required average received signal energy per bit-to-background noise power spectrum density ratio (Eb/N0) for error-free transmission with time diversity for NRT type traffic data is reduced by more than 2 dB compared to that for conventional RACH without the relative transmission power control for a wide rage of fading maximum Doppler frequencies.

This paper proposes an adaptive radio parameter control scheme that utilizes an optimum radio parameter set comprising the maximum number of retransmissions in hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) in addition to the data modulation and channel coding scheme (MCS) according to the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements (i.e., the required packet error rate and delay) and propagation conditions such as the delay spread in the forward link of Orthogonal Frequency and Code Division Multiplexing (OFCDM) broadband wireless access. We elucidate by simulation evaluation that most of the optimum MCSs are common regardless of the delay requirement of traffic data, i.e., common between non-real time (NRT) and real-time (RT) class data. Concretely, the three MCSs of QPSK with the coding rate of R=1/2, 16QAM with R=1/2 and 3/4 are optimum ones, although the additional MCS of QPSK with R=1/3 is effective only for the RT class data in the lower received average received signal energy per symbol-to-background noise power density ratio (Es/N0) region. Furthermore, application of a much higher MCS set, 16QAM with R=5/6 and 64QAM with R=3/4, in addition to the three common MCSs improves the throughput under much higher Es/N0 conditions in a small delay spread environment. The simulation results show that the delay requirement, i.e., the maximum number of retransmissions, in HARQ does not affect the key radio parameter such as MCS, because of informative results such as a smaller number of retransmissions associated with a less-efficient MCS achieves a higher throughput than does using a more highly-efficient MCS allowing a larger number of retransmissions. Consequently, it is concluded that the proposed adaptive radio parameter control according to the QoS requirements substantially results in the selection of the optimum MCS irrespective of the delay requirement except for the extreme case where no retransmissions are allowed and for special propagation channel conditions.

This paper describes IP traffic, especially the control of VoIP traffic, on the carrier-scale, and proposes algorithms for it. It examines a case that has already been introduced in the United States and discusses the trend of standardization for this control. Control techniques that will be introduced into the IP network in the future are considered from the viewpoints of both "quality" that users receive and the "control" that carriers perform.

This paper studies the application of a media synchronization mechanism to the interleaved transmission of video and audio specified by the H.223 Annex in PHS. The media synchronization problem due to network delay jitters in the interleaved transmission has not been discussed in either the Annex or any related standards. The slide control scheme, which has been proposed by the authors, is applied to live media. We also propose a QOS control scheme to control both quality of the media synchronization and that of the transmission delay. Through simulation we confirm the effectiveness of the slide control scheme and the QOS control scheme in the interleaved transmission.

This paper proposes a multiple QoS control scheme that combines the head-of-line priority (HOLP) discipline with equivalent-window connection admission control (CAC). The proposed scheme can support the different cell loss ratios of both delay-sensitive traffic in high-priority buffers and delay-tolerant traffic in low-priority buffers. The CAC scheme extends a measurement-based CAC algorithm for a single buffer to the low-priority buffer with the HOLP discipline to provide the cell loss ratio objective. We introduce an equivalent window for monitoring low-priority cell streams. The equivalent window size equals the period within which the number of times the low-priority buffer is scanned to read cells is constant. Thus the equivalent window size varies with the high-priority queueing state. Numerical results indicate that the proposed QoS control scheme using the equivalent-window CAC can utilize network resources more effectively than the conventional control scheme which is Virtual Path (VP) separation for different cell loss requirement services. In addition, it is confirmed that the proposed scheme provides conservative admissible loads. Thus, this proposed scheme can achieve large statistical gains while providing both high-priority and low-priority cell loss ratio objectives. The proposed scheme will be very useful for cost-effective multimedia services that have different QoS requirements.

In the current ATM AAL5 implementation, even a single cell loss event can lead to the corruption of one whole packet. Hence, it has been observed that the throughput of upper layer protocol may easily collapse on a congested ATM network. In this paper, we propose a buffer management method called Age Priority Packet Discarding (APPD) scheme to be used along with two other schemes: the Early Packet Discarding (EPD) and the Partial Packet Discarding (PPD) schemes. After describing the operations and the pseudo code of the proposed APPD scheme and how it operates with the EPD/PPD schemes, the packet level QoS of APPD and its extended versions are derived analytically under homogeneous ON-OFF source model. Numerical results obtained via analytical approach suggest that the proposed APPD scheme can more effectively and fairly reduce packet loss probability than other schemes.