Designing an Efficient and Extensible

Mobile TV Testbed

Cheng-Hsin Hsu

Simon Fraser University, Canada

joint work with Mohamed Hefeeda,

Yi Liu, and Cong Ly

Mobile TV ServiceMobile TV Service

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Broadcast mass-market programs to subscribers Mobile devices have stringent energy budgets Devices receive a data burst and turn off receiving

circuits until the next burst called time slicing

Base Station

Mobile TV NetworksMobile TV Networks

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Program feeds are IP streams from streaming servers or cameras

Multiple TV programs are multiplexed AND time sliced by a multiplexer into a MPEG-2 TS stream

The MPEG-2 TS stream is modulated, amplified, and broadcast to mobile devices

Streaming Server

Camera

Multiplexer(IP Encapsulator)

Modulator/Amplifier

IP Networks ASI Networks

ContentProviders

Network Operators

Problem StatementProblem Statement

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Design a mobile TV base station for academic prototyping and cost-efficient small- to medium-size deployments platform to analyze: energy consumption,

channel switching delay, no. broadcast programs, and perceived streaming quality

10-20 TV channels with a commodity PC or low-end server

Current Solutions (1/2)Current Solutions (1/2)

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Commercial Base Stations expensive, e.g., a single EXPWAY FastESG

server costs 75k USD [Sarri09] a complete base station costs even more

Need a more cost-efficient base station!

x20?

Current Solutions (2/2)Current Solutions (2/2)

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Open-Source Base Station [FATCAPS] too many disk I/O’s does not scale well too many utilities with no admin interface

Need a better design!

VLCServer

MPEG

DataAggregato

r

Pcap

TimeSlicer

TS

Tdt Updater

Correct PSISI

Dtplay

PythonCompiler

PythonSources

For PSISI

TS Packets

Null PacketReplacer

w/PSISI

Design GoalsDesign Goals

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[G1] Higher efficiency and scalability avoid disk I/O’s and memcpys

[G2] Utilization of multi-core processors pipelined structure to allow parallelism

[G3] Integrated software solution centralized admin interface

[G4] Better extensibility future supports for other networks such as

MediaFLO, WiMAX, and MBMS

Design Decisions (1/3)Design Decisions (1/3)

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[D1] Use Burst as the unit of time slicing, encapsulation, and transmission. Burst is self-contained with IP payloads and

headers/trailers of all protocols No disk I/O’s for intermediate data No memcpys for IP payloads

Design Decisions (2/3)Design Decisions (2/3)

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[D2] Divide the base station into three indep. Phases, which are connected by two priority queue pipelined and parallelism

Empty Burst

Time SlicingThread

With IPPayload

RequestQueue

Encap.Thread

With All Headers/Trailers

ReadyQueue

Trans.Thread

Encap.Thread

Encap.Thread

Design Decisions (3/3)Design Decisions (3/3)

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[D3] Implement a centralized Configuration Manager to allow save/restore settings interface with Web GUI for management

[D4] Modularized design for future extensions For example, MPE-FEC Burst is a subclass of

MPE Burst

Software ArchitectureSoftware Architecture

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High-Level DesignHigh-Level Design

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Design of Burst SchedulersDesign of Burst Schedulers

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Design of Burst ReadersDesign of Burst Readers

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Design of BurstsDesign of Bursts

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Design of EncapsulatorsDesign of Encapsulators

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Design of TransmitterDesign of Transmitter

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Design of PSI/SI TablesDesign of PSI/SI Tables

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PAT: program association PMT: program map NIT: network information INT: IP/MAC notification SDT: service description TDT: time and date

Design of Configuration ManagerDesign of Configuration Manager

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Testbed SetupTestbed Setup

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Future WorkFuture Work

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Web GUI for configuration management [Cong] MPE-FEC support [Hamed] PSI/SI table implementation [Farid] StreamReader classes [Som] Flute server integration ESG files implementation

ConclusionsConclusions

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Presented layout of general broadcast network

Outlined design goals of a broadcast base station

Described our design decisions and system architecture

Presented the high-level system design and detailed design for each component

Highlighted future work

Thank You, and Questions?Thank You, and Questions?

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More details can be found online at http://nsl.cs.sfu.ca