Analysis of Queues for Interactive Voice and Video Response Systems : Two Party Video Calls

Abstract: Video conversation on mobile devices is popularizing with the advent of 3G. The enhanced network capacity thus available enables transmission of video data over the internet. It has been forecasted by several VOIP service organizations that the present IVR systems will evolve into Voice and Video Response (IVVR) Systems. However, this evolution has many technical challenges on the way. Architectures to implement queuing systems for video data and standards for inter conversion of video data between the formats supported by calling parties are two of these challenges. This thesis is an analysis of queues and media transcoding for IVVRs. A major effort in this work involves constructing a prototype IVVR queuing system. The system is constructed by using an open source server named Asterisk and MySql database. Asterisk is a SIP based Public Exchange Server (PBX) and also a development environment for VOIP based IVRs. Functional scenarios for SIP session establishment and the corresponding session setup times for this queueing model are measured. The results indicate that the prototype serves as a sufficient model for a queue, although a significant delay is introduced for session establishment.  The work also includes analysis of integrating DiaStar™, is a SIP based media transcoding engine to this queue. However, this system is not complete to function with DiaStar for media translation. The study concludes with a mention of the areas for future work on this particular system and the general state of IVVR queuing systems in the industry.