Design of agent-based flexible multimedia system

A distributed multimedia system not only integrates various multimedia information distributed over computer networks and but also provides it to users in accordance with the user´s requirements during realtime multimedia communication and must guarantee the user the requested quality of service (QoS) even though the computer and network resources change statically or dynamically. We propose a flexible multimedia system (FMS) which is based on agent-oriented architecture. The system is able to organize the required functions itself, provide both realtime and stored multimedia information services simultaneously to users even though various users´ multimedia environment and the resource utility of computers or networks have been dynamically changed. The paper describes the FMS architecture for a multimedia teleconference service with adaptive QoS guarantee functions, and designs the FMS to implement a prototype system. In a multimedia teleconference service, FMS is able to realize one of the multimedia communication services flexibly for service requests and QoS requests from users