Collaborative Networking for Dynamic QoS Management in 3G Communications by "Boomerang" Watermarking

This work presents a collaborative network-aware processing of multimedia content for dynamic quality of service (QoS) management using tracing watermarking. Tracing watemarking has been recently proposed as a technique to provide a blind measure of the QoS of the communication link, focusing on multimedia communication scenarios. In this work, we use the transmitted video-sequences to monitor the QoS in a videoconference call. The video-sequence of every active user travels on the communication link, one time as video (transparent mode), one lime as watermark (hidden mode) describing a boomerang trajectory. The results obtained through our simulation trials confirm the validity of such approach. In fact, the advantages of distributing the management process are (i) an easier and more precise localization of the cause of QoS problems, (ii) a better knowledge of local situations, (iii) a lower complexity for a single QoS agent and (iv) an increase in possible actions.