Sony Deutschland Gmbh

Nokia Siemens Networks Gmbh & Co Kg

Sony Deustschland Gmbh

Andreas Kassler

Davide Mandato

Teodora Guenkova-Luy

Markus Nosse

A system offering an Application Programming Interface for multi-stream multimedia applications running on at least two registered end peers participating in a mobile telecommunication session and/or middleware being connected to a mobile network. The system providing guaranteed end-to-end quality and resource capabilities using the concept of concatenated E2ENP phases and providing a pre-negotiation of a multiplicity of alternative capabilities and QoS Contracts, management of leased pre-negotiated information, session establishment between said end peers with negotiation of a multiplicity of alternative capabilities and/or QoS Contracts, and a dynamic re-negotiation of the end-to-end quality and capabilities. The information to be negotiated is expressed in an interchangeable format allowing multi-stream multimedia applications to agree on a specific reference model of the negotiated information, which can then be used for dynamically configuring Finite State Machines to orchestrate local, peer, and network resources according to the preferences and profiles of the respective user.

Specification of a software architecture for capability and quality-of-service negotiations and session establishment for distributed multimedia applications

This invention presents a framework for achieving dynamic End-to End QoS negotiation and control coordination, with distributed multimedia applications. The framework builds upon dynamic capability negotiations and specification of Adaptation Paths and (alternative) QoS Contracts, based on user preferences. In particular we present a protocol providing End-to-End negotiation of alternative QoS, capabilities, and preferences/configurations, based on extensions of IP-based protocols like SIP/RTSP/SDP, in coordination with mechanisms for network resource reservation (e.g. RSVP), local terminal resource (e.g. CPU, memory, power, auxiliary devices) reservation, and adaptation mechanisms. To this extent, and with respect to two or more peers () this invention identifies six phases, through which said peers can establish multiparty, multi-stream, multimedia communications. In detail, the phases are: Protocol Discovery (), Pre-Negotiation (), Multi-Stream QoS Synchronization and QoS Correlation (), Fast-Negotiation (obeying the Economy Principle) (), Re-Negotiation (obeying the Economy Principle) (), Resource Reservation Release (). All the six phases can be concatenated, or be executed at different times. This invention also presents the concept of the E2ENP Broker (), an optional third-party entity, which can be used for relieving peers () from performing the time- and resource-consuming Pre-Negotiation phase () (and eventually also the Multi-Stream QoS Synchronization and QoS Correlation (). This entity may coincide with e.g. audio-/videoconference bridges.

Method for achieving end-to-end quality of service negotiations for distributed multi-media applications

The underlying invention generally relates to the field of mobile computing in a networking environment with distributed multimedia applications and technologies. More specifically, it is directed to the concept of the End-to-End Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP) phases, which enable a pre-negotiation (), fast negotiation () and a fast, dynamic renegotiation () of the end-to-end quality and capabilities for telecommunication sessions (), for multiple configurations of two or a multiplicity of end peers and/or intermediate components in a consistent, reliable, and incremental way by enabling the mobile users' applications to efficiently and timely react to QoS violations. In this context, the invention proposes a model for defining user profiles and terminal capability information in such a way that hierarchical QoS contract specifications (), e.g. compelling correlations () across different sets of QoS contracts () for related media streams (), can be enforced and used for deriving negotiable information. As a reference implementation of this concept, this invention proposes a novel usage of the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP,) standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in conjunction with extensions of the Session Description Protocol Next Generation (SDPng,) specification based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) in order to implement concepts of the End-to-End QoS Negotiation Protocol (E2ENP,).

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Lauingen, Germany

Andreas Kassler