Hadi
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Paper accepted: Elsevier Signal Processing: Reversible Data Hiding for Color Images Based on Pixel Value Order of Overall Process Channel Correlation

Journal Website

Authors: Ningxiong Maoa (Southwest Jiaotong University), Hongjie Hea (Southwest Jiaotong University), Fan Chenb (Southwest Jiaotong University), Lingfeng Qua (Southwest Jiaotong University), Hadi Amirpour (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), and Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Abstract: Color image Reversible Data Hiding (RDH) is getting more and more important since the number of its applications is steadily growing. This paper proposes an efficient color image RDH scheme based on pixel value ordering (PVO), in which the channel correlation is fully utilized to improve the embedding performance. In the proposed method, the channel correlation is used in the overall process of data embedding, including prediction stage, block selection and capacity allocation. In the prediction stage, since the pixel values in the co-located blocks in different channels are monotonically consistent, the large pixel values are collected preferentially by pre-sorting the intra-block pixels. This can effectively improve the embedding capacity of RDH based on PVO. In the block selection stage, the description accuracy of block complexity value is improved by exploiting the texture similarity between the channels. The smoothing the block is then preferentially used to reduce invalid shifts. To achieve low complexity and high accuracy in capacity allocation, the proportion of the expanded prediction error to the total expanded prediction error in each channel is calculated during the capacity allocation process. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves significant superiority in fidelity over a series of state-of-the-art schemes. For example, the PSNR of the Lena image reaches 62.43dB, which is a 0.16dB gain compared to the best results in the literature with a 20,000bits embedding capacity.

Keywords—Reversible data hiding, color image, pixel value ordering, channel correlation

5g_Kaerntner_Fog_Logo
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Paper accepted @ IEEE ISM´2022: Semantic-Aware View Prediction for 360-Degree Videos at the 5G Edge

IEEE ISM’2022 (https://www.ieee-ism.org/)

Authors: Shivi Vats, Jounsup Park, Klara Nahrstedt, Michael Zink, Ramesh Sitaraman, and Hermann Hellwagner

Abstract: In a 5G testbed, we use 360° video streaming to test, measure, and demonstrate the 5G infrastructure, including the capabilities and challenges of edge computing support. Specifically, we use the SEAWARE (Semantic-Aware View Prediction) software system, originally described in [1], at the edge of the 5G network to support a 360° video player (handling tiled videos) by view prediction. Originally, SEAWARE performs semantic analysis of a 360° video on the media server, by extracting, e.g., important objects and events. This video semantic information is encoded in specific data structures and shared with the client in a DASH streaming framework. Making use of these data structures, the client/player can perform view prediction without in-depth, computationally expensive semantic video analysis. In this paper, the SEAWARE system was ported and adapted to run (partially) on the edge where it can be used to predict views and prefetch predicted segments/tiles in high quality in order to have them available close to the client when requested. The paper gives an overview of the 5G testbed, the overall architecture, and the implementation of SEAWARE at the edge server. Since an important goal of this work is to achieve low motion-to-glass latencies, we developed and describe “tile postloading”, a technique that allows non-predicted tiles to be fetched in high quality into a segment already available in the player buffer. The performance of 360° tiled video playback on the 5G infrastructure is evaluated and presented. Current limitations of the 5G network in use and some challenges of DASH-based streaming and of edge-assisted viewport prediction under “real-world” constraints are pointed out; further, the performance benefits of tile postloading are disclosed.

 

Hadi
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Paper accepted @ IEEE TIP: Advanced Scalability for Light Field Image Coding

IEEE Transactions on Image Processing (TIP)
Journal Website

 

Authors: Hadi Amirpour (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Christine Guillemot (INRIA, France), Mohammad Ghanbari (University of Essex, UK), and Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Abstract: Light field imaging, which captures both spatial and angular information, improves user immersion by enabling post-capture actions, such as refocusing and changing view perspective. However, light fields represent very large volumes of data with a lot of redundancy that coding methods try to remove. State-of-the-art coding methods indeed usually focus on improving compression efficiency and overlook other important features in light field compression such as scalability. In this paper, we propose a novel light field image compression method that enables (i) viewport scalability, (ii) quality scalability, (iii) spatial scalability, (iv) random access, and (v) uniform quality distribution among viewports, while keeping compression efficiency high. To this end, light fields in each spatial resolution are divided into sequential viewport layers, and viewports in each layer are encoded using the previously encoded viewports. In each viewport layer, \revision{the} available viewports are used to synthesize intermediate viewports using a video interpolation deep learning network. The synthesized views are used as virtual reference images to enhance the quality of intermediate views. An image super-resolution method is applied to improve the quality of the lower spatial resolution layer. The super-resolved images are also used as virtual reference images to improve the quality of the higher spatial resolution layer.
The proposed structure also improves the flexibility of light field streaming, provides random access to the viewports, and increases error resiliency. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a high compression efficiency and it can adapt to the display type, transmission channel, network condition, processing power, and user needs.

Keywords—Light field, compression, scalability, random access, deep learning.

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Paper accepted: CNN-assisted Road Sign Inspection on the Computing Continuum

2022 IEEE/ACM 2nd Workshop on Distributed Machine Learning for the Intelligent Computing Continuum (DML-ICC) In conjuction with IEEE/ACM UCC 2022 December 6-9, 2022 | Vancouver, Washington, USA

Authors: Narges Mehran (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt) and Radu Prodan (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

Abstract: Processing rapidly growing data encompasses complex workflows that utilize the Cloud for high-performance computing and the Fog and Edge devices for low-latency communication. For example, autonomous driving applications require inspection, recognition, and classification of road signs for safety inspection assessments, especially on crowded roads. Such applications are among the famous research and industrial exploration topics in computer vision and machine learning. In this work, we design a road sign inspection workflow consisting of 1) encoding and framing tasks of video streams captured by camera sensors embedded in the vehicles, and 2) convolutional neural network (CNN) training and inference models for accurate visual object recognition. We explore a matching theoretic algorithm named CODA [1] to place the workflow on the computing continuum, targeting the workflow processing time, data transfer intensity, and energy consumption as objectives. Evaluation results on a real computing continuum testbed federated among four Cloud, Fog, and Edge providers reveal that CODA achieves 50%-60% lower completion time, 33%-59% lower CO2 emissions, and 19%-45% lower data transfer intensity compared to two stateof-the-art methods.

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Zeinab Bakhshi, a Ph.D. student from Mälardalens University was at ITEC

As a Hipeac member, we are hosting Zeinab Bakhshi, a Ph.D. student from Mälardalens University in Sweden. Zeinab achieved a Hipeac collaboration grant and is now hosted by Profesor Radu Prodan to expand her research on container-based fog architectures. Taking advantage of the multi-layer continuum computing architecture in Klagenfurt lab helps Zeinab deploy the use case she is researching on. These scientific experiments take her research work to the next level. We are planning to publish our collaborative research work in a series of papers based on the upcoming results.

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Paper accepted: ARARAT: A Collaborative Edge-Assisted Framework for HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming

IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM)

Journal Website

Authors: Reza Farahani (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Mohammad Shojafar (University of Surry, UK), Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Farzad Tashtarian (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Mohammad Ghanbari (University of Essex, UK), and Hermann Hellwagner (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Abstract: With the ever-increasing demands for high-definition and low-latency video streaming applications, network-assisted video streaming schemes have become a promising complementary solution in the HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) context to improve users’ Quality of Experience (QoE) as well as network utilization. Edge computing is considered one of the leading networking paradigms for designing such systems by providing video processing and caching close to the end-users. Despite the wide usage of this technology, designing network-assisted HAS architectures that support low-latency and high-quality video streaming, including edge collaboration is still a challenge. To address these issues, this article leverages the Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and edge computing paradigms to propose A collaboRative edge-Assisted framewoRk for HTTP Adaptive video sTreaming (ARARAT). Aiming at minimizing HAS clients’ serving time and network cost, besides considering available resources and all possible serving actions, we design a multi-layer architecture and formulate the problem as a centralized optimization model executed by the SDN controller. However, to cope with the high time complexity of the centralized model, we introduce three heuristic approaches that produce near-optimal solutions through efficient collaboration between the SDN controller and edge servers. Finally, we implement the ARARAT framework, conduct our experiments on a large-scale cloud-based testbed including 250 HAS players, and compare its effectiveness with state-of-the-art systems within comprehensive scenarios. The experimental results illustrate that the proposed ARARAT methods (i) improve users’ QoE by at least 47%, (ii) decrease the streaming cost, including bandwidth and computational costs, by at least 47%, and (iii) enhance network utilization, by at least 48% compared to state-of-the-art approaches.

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Paper accepted: Towards Extreme and Sustainable Graph Processing for Urgent Societal Challenges in Europe @ IEEE Cloud Summit 2022

IEEE Cloud Summit 2022, https://www.ieeecloudsummit.org/

Authors: Radu Prodan, Dragi Kimovski, Andrea Bartolini, Michael Cochez,
Alexandru Iosup, Evgeny Kharlamov, Joze Rozanec, Laurentiu Vasiliu, Ana
Lucia Varbanescu

Abstract: The Graph-Massivizer project, funded by the Horizon Europe research and innovation program, researches and develops a high-performance, scalable, and sustainable platform for information processing and reasoning based on the massive graph (MG) representation of extreme data. It delivers a toolkit of five open-source software tools and FAIR graph datasets covering the sustainable lifecycle of processing extreme data as MGs. The tools focus on holistic usability (from extreme data ingestion and MG creation), automated intelligence (through analytics and reasoning), performance modelling, and environmental sustainability tradeoffs, supported by credible data-driven evidence across the computing continuum. The automated operation based on the emerging serverless computing paradigm supports experienced and novice stakeholders from a broad group of large and small organisations to capitalise on extreme data through MG programming and processing.

Graph-Massivizer validates its innovation on four complementary use cases considering their extreme data properties and coverage of the three sustainability pillars (economy, society, and environment): sustainable green finance, global environment protection foresight, green AI for the sustainable automotive industry, and data centre digital twin for exascale computing. Graph-Massivizer promises 70% more efficient analytics than AliGraph, and 30% improved energy awareness for ETL storage operations than Amazon Redshift. Furthermore, it aims to demonstrate a possible two-fold improvement in data centre energy efficiency and over 25% lower greenhouse gas emissions for basic graph operations.

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Paper accepted: CADLAD: Device-aware Bitrate Ladder Construction for HTTP Adaptive Streaming

18th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM 2022)

Thessaloniki, Greece | 31 October – 4 November 2022

Conference Website

Minh Nguyen (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Babak Taraghi (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Abdelhak Bentaleb (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Roger Zimmermann (National University of Singapore, Singapore), and Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Abstract: Considering network conditions, video content, and viewer device type/screen resolution to construct a bitrate ladder is necessary to deliver the best Quality of Experience (QoE).
A large-screen device like a TV needs a high bitrate with high resolution to provide good visual quality, whereas a small one like a phone requires a low bitrate with low resolution. In
addition, encoding high-quality levels at the server side while the network is unable to deliver them causes unnecessary cost for the content provider. Recently, the Common Media Client Data (CMCD) standard has been proposed, which defines the data that is collected at the client and sent to the server with its HTTP requests. This data is useful in log analysis, quality of service/experience monitoring and delivery improvements.

cadlad

 

In this paper, we introduce a CMCD-Aware per-Device bitrate LADder construction (CADLAD) that leverages CMCD to address the above issues. CADLAD comprises components at both client and server sides. The client calculates the top bitrate (tb) — a CMCD parameter to indicate the highest bitrate that can be rendered at the client — and sends it to the server together with its device type and screen resolution. The server decides on a suitable bitrate ladder, whose maximum bitrate and resolution are based on CMCD parameters, to the client device with the purpose of providing maximum QoE while minimizing delivered data. CADLAD has two versions to work in Video on
Demand (VoD) and live streaming scenarios. Our CADLAD is client agnostic; hence, it can work with any players and ABR algorithms at the client. The experimental results show that CADLAD is able to increase the QoE by 2.6x while saving 71% of delivered data, compared to an existing bitrate ladder of an available video dataset. We implement our idea within CAdViSE — an open-source testbed for reproducibility.

 

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Paper accepted: Hybrid P2P-CDN Architecture for Live Video Streaming: An Online Learning Approach

IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM)

December 4-8, 2022 |Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Conference Website

Authors: Reza Farahani (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Abdelhak Bentaleb (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Ekrem Cetinkaya (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Christian Timmerer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria), Roger Zimmermann (National University of Singapore, Singapore), and Hermann Hellwagner (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)

Abstract: a cost-effective, scalable, and flexible architecture that supports low latency and high-quality live video streaming is still a challenge for Over-The-Top (OTT) service providers. To cope with this issue, this paper leverages Peer-to-Peer (P2P), Content Delivery Network (CDN), edge computing, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and distributed video transcoding paradigms to introduce a hybRId P2P-CDN arcHiTecture for livE video stReaming (RICHTER). We first introduce RICHTER’s multi-layer architecture and design an action tree that considers all feasible resources provided by peers, edge, and CDN servers for serving peer requests with minimum latency and maximum quality. We then formulate the problem as an optimization model executed at the edge of the network. We present an Online Learning (OL) approach that leverages an unsupervised Self Organizing Map (SOM) to (i) alleviate the time complexity issue of the optimization model and (ii) make it a suitable solution for large-scale scenarios by enabling decisions for groups of requests instead of for single requests. Finally, we implement the RICHTER framework, conduct our experiments on a large-scale cloud-based testbed including 350 HAS players, and compare its effectiveness with baseline systems. The experimental results illustrate that RICHTER outperforms baseline schemes in terms of users’ Quality of Experience (QoE), latency, and network utilization, by at least 59%, 39%, and 70%, respectively.

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STSM-visit of Hamza Baniata @ ITEC

During the period Aug 1st –26th, 2022, Hamza Baniata, a PhD Candidate at the Department of Computer Science, University of Szeged, Hungary, has visited the institute of Information Technology of the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. Under the collaborative supervision by Prof.
Attila Kertesz (SZTE) and Prof. Radu Prodan (ITEC), Hamza has performed several research activities related to the simulation of Blockchain and Fog Computing applications, the enhancement of the FoBSim simulation tool, and the integration of Machine Learning with Blockchain technology. The visit was encouraged and funded by the European COST program under action identifier CA19135 (CERCIRAS), in which Attila, Radu and Hamza are active members. The scientific results of this research visit are currently being edited and finalized in order to be disseminated in an international scientific conference.