Design and Evaluation of Mobile-to-Mobile Multimedia Streaming using REST-based Mobile Services

Abstract: Today, it has become conveniently possible to host Web Services (WS) on mobile node using a Mobile Web Server (MWS). To address a vast range of use cases, these hosted mobileWS may be implemented to offer synchronous and asynchronous execution styles depending upon the requirements of mobile application. Thus, the MWS actually provides the necessary architectural capabilities to handle and process incoming requests for each class of service. But, it is very vital for these servers to simplify the service access and creation mechanisms, so that, the processing overheads on the hosting node are reduced. Previously, research has shown promising optimizations in MWSprocessing by using theREST architecture style for service access and creation. However, the mobile WSoffered by the existingMWSusesXML based payload for information exchange, which restricts the incorporation of the rich multimedia content, such as, audio and video data. As a consequence, the true potential of the REST -based server architecture is not utilized. This thesis addresses architectural and transport layer issues to enable the exchange of rich multimedia content between mobile nodes using mobile WS over the live wireless data networks. The research work is focused on the implementation of multimedia streaming protocol standards, such as, the RTSPand theRTP, into the existingREST-basedMWS architecture. Also, to enable the controlled Mobile-to-Mobile (M2M) media streaming capabilities, the thesis uses both TCP and UDP as transport layer protocols for signaling and data transmission, respectively. The control functions are implemented by mapping the synchronous and asynchronous mobile WS to the RTSPmethods. The implementation extends the states of the asynchronous mobileWS to offer these multimedia control functions. The issues related to the firewalls and Network Address Translation (NAT) are addressed by the development of an Intermediate Access Gateway (IAG),which offers the functionality based on the STUNandTURN concepts. This work enables mobile WS basedM2M media streaming either through the directly established connection with the peers, or via the IAG. Thus, the developed proof-of-concept prototype demonstrates the streaming capabilities of the extended MWS architecture over any wireless data networks.