An energy-efficient video transport protocol for personal cloud-based computing

摘要

Recently, we are surrounded by a collection of heterogeneous computing devices such as desktop computers, laptops, smart phones, smart televisions, and tablet PCs. Each device is operated with its own host operating system, has its own internal architecture, and performs its independent tasks with its own applications and data. A common property amongst these devices, namely that of internet-connectivity, allows them to configure personal virtual cloud system by interconnecting each other through an intermediate switching device. The personal cloud service should provide a seamlessly unified computing environment across multiple devices with synchronized data and application programs. As such, it allows users to freely switch their workspace from one device to another while continuing the interaction with the available applications. In order to support video applications, the cloud system should provide seamless video synchronization among the multiple devices. However, we note that the current cloud services do not provide efficient data flow among devices. In this paper, we propose and develop a new reliable transport protocol to support video synchronization for the personal virtual cloud system. In order to cope with battery limitation of many mobile devices in personal virtual cloud system, the proposed protocol is designed to provide energy efficient video communications. Our simulation results show that the proposed protocol can reduce end users power consumption up to 25 % compared to the legacy TCP with given packet loss probabilities and the average length of error bursts.