Projects in Multimedia Research Laboratory

 

·        Wavelet Based Video Conferencing (funded by National ICT R&D fund)

Transmission of real-time multimedia information over data networks is an emerging discipline with applications in a number of business, medicine and educational activities. The main objective of this research would be to explore the usage of open source Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) based codec within some appropriate video conferencing system (e.g. SIP) for conferencing purposes. Based on the analysis of these techniques, a new algorithm and implementation will be developed that would aim to improve the coding efficiency and computational complexity in wavelet based video compression and real-time video communication. One main objective is to have a scalable video codec to cater different resolutions and frame rate.

Digital video is being adopted in a vast array of applications ranging from fixed and mobile telephony to real-time video conferencing, DVD and high definition digital television. Applications such as video conferencing are strongly affected by bandwidth constraints and have strict processing-time limitations to provide online data for real-time communication. The increase in demand for such applications has motivated the need for efficient video compression algorithms that can produce acceptable video quality at high compression rates. Wavelet technology can enable high quality digital video compression by removing redundancy in individual frames as well as between successive frames without any blocking artifacts. The aim of this research initiative is to investigate video coding schemes using wavelet transforms especially with a view to develop a hybrid scheme that can decode both wavelet transform based as well as DCT block based encoded streams.

Main objective of this project is to develop a wavelet transform based video conferencing system that will result in better utilization of bandwidth in heterogeneous networks.

The key benefits of this project are given below:

  • This project will help in data communication services, telemedicine services and education, by reaching out to the remote areas of the country.
  • It will develop a real-time video conferencing system based on wavelet (or hybrid DWT-DCT) based video codec.
  • It will facilitate Off-shore businesses.

Further details of ICT funded Wavelet project are available here
 

 

 

 

·        Power Aware Video Coding for Extending Battery Life in Portable and Mobile Devices

Mobile phones are taking up add-on Multimedia functionalities requiring long operation time. This includes watching TV (mobile TV), video recording and playing, video streaming and video phony. Uses of other portable multimedia devices are also becoming more and more common. Wireless video sensors and networks are still another emerging application of power aware coding. Broadband wireless networks are being considered for deployment in the field of defense, security, 3-D video reconstruction. Video coding has to be done on the video sensor nodes which are battery operated and are meant for long term field deployment. Low power and power aware video coding can provide extended operational duration to get the best services out of these applications. This calls upon investigating and developing low power and power-adaptive computational schemes like that for video coding which specifically is a very power hungry task. Developing Video codec software architectures that are power-adaptive is an emerging research area. This research will focus on this task and the specific objective of the project are:

 

  1. To benchmark the shortcomings of existing video codec’s in meeting the customers expectation due to limited energy resources of the portable and mobile devices
  2. To research on and develop (a proof-of-concept) low power and power-aware video codec for battery operated mobile and portable devices which can yield a longer battery life and is adaptive to the varying battery power level. It could be implement-able on low power DSPs (cores) as generally used in mobile devices.
  3. To demonstrate its superiority in meeting the users expectations.

 

 

Further details of ICT funded Power Aware project are available here
 

 

 

 

 

·        Video Over Wireless

 

 

·        Multi-view Image Processing

 

 

·        Distributed Video Coding