Context Aware Multimedia Content Adaptation

As the driving forces of technological change continue to increase exponentially as predicted by Moores’ law, we have been witnessing in the last years major breakthroughs in the fields of wireless and mobile communications as well as unprecedented proliferation of multimedia enabled devices and networks. These devices can consume remote multimedia contents by connecting wirelessly through different types of access networks. However, there are problems of poor content quality and high delay/response. These problems originate from multiple varying constraints imposed by the context of usage such as contents format diversities, inadequate terminal capabilities, unreliable wireless network characteristics, diverse user preferences and unfavourable environment conditions. Current research approaches addressing these issues have not produced satisfactorily user’s expected quality because they tend to address the different constraints in isolated manner. Moreover, they are focused on either adaptation at network layer or adaptation at Application/user level. Adaptation at application/user level, we believe, must be negotiated in conjunction with adaptation at network layer to achieve improvement in the quality of multimedia contents presented to users, guaranteeing efficient and fair usage of resources.