A mobile SIP client : From the user interface design to evaluation of synchronised playout from multiple SIP user agents

Abstract: The thesis examines the ability to have synchronized playout of audio from multiple devices. The paths between the source of this audio and the output devices may be different. Our objective is to provide a generic low-cost solution, without the use of special hardware. The context of this work is internet telephony, but the work is also applicable to other settings. In internet telephony this synchronization not only contributes to the natural flow of conversation, but also maintains the spatial effect of the incoming audio streams, as well as the location awareness of the peers. We envisioned users of handheld devices might collectively utilize their personal devices to enable a shared spatial audio environment. In the simplest case two users each with monophonic terminals could provide stereo. Hence, the second part of this study addresses the practical issue of how such synchronization could be utilized in a internet telephony client to provide such multidevice playout. We utilized minisip, as an open-source Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) client supporting security, as the basic client. To realize the vision, we ported minisip to a Pocket PC environment. In the second part of this thesis we examine the process of porting preexisting code to such a new architecture, as well as how to map an existing human-computer interface to such a handheld device. The thesis shows that synchronization is possible and explores some of the implementation’s limitations. A clear result is the need to combine the results of several theses into the common trunk code - so as to combine the earlier RTCP work with this synchronization work and to provide the a human-computer interface which is suitable for many different handheld devices, ranging from Pocket PCs to SmartPhones.