Alane L

Education

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,

University of California, Berkeley, CA December 2003

Dissertation Title: Path Diversity Media Streaming

Research Adviser: Avideh Zakhor

Thesis Committee: Avideh Zakhor, Kannan Ramchandran, Ion Stoica, Stanley Klein

Major Areas: Signal Processing, Multimedia Networking, and Data Analysis

Minor Areas: Statistics, Machine Learning, and Networking

M.S. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,

University of California, Berkeley, CA May 2000

Thesis Title: Performance Analysis of an H.263 Video Encoder for IRAM

Thesis Committee: Avideh Zakhor, Kathy Yelick

B.S. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,

University of Washington, Seattle May 1995

Professional Experience

Video and Image Processing Laboratory,

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, U.C. Berkeley

Graduate Student Researcher, 09/98 – present

q Path diversity media streaming

The current ``best-effort'' Internet does not guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) such as minimum bandwidth, packet loss rate, and delay, which are critical to many multimedia applications. As such, many significant challenges remain to design and deploy delay sensitive multimedia applications over the Internet effectively. In my dissertation, I develop a path diversity framework for concurrent media streaming to a receiver using multiple routes. Without requiring QoS, the path diversity framework improves the quality of the streamed media via multiple routes created using either multiple senders or relay nodes, in order to increase available bandwidth, reduce packet loss and delay. The proposed path diversity framework combines many approaches from the network architecture and protocols, to source and channel coding to in order to improve the overall quality of the streamed media.

From an architecture point of view, the path diversity framework combats packet loss, delay, and insufficient bandwidth for pre-recorded streaming media by sending packets simultaneously from multiple senders to a single receiver. For interactive and live streaming applications, the path diversity framework allows a single sender to send packets simultaneously on both default and redundant paths to the receiver. To create a redundant path, the sender sends packets to the appropriate relay node, which then forwards the packets to the receiver. The relay node selection algorithm is designed to ensure that packets traveling through the relay node take a different underlying physical path than that of the default path, hence, providing redundancy and protection against network outages and congestion.

To facilitate concurrent streaming to a receiver from multiple senders, I develop a transport protocol to synchronize simultaneous transmission of a media. In particular, the protocol employs the rate allocation and packet partition algorithms. The rate algorithm determines the sending rate on each route in order to minimize the packet loss, while the packet partition algorithm ensures that each packet is sent by one and only one sender and at the same time, minimizes startup delay.

From a channel coding perspective, I show theoretically and experimentally that using Forward Error Correction (FEC) in streaming the media simultaneously over multiple mostly independent routes at appropriate sending rates is more effective than using FEC with the traditional uni-path streaming. I also provide a robustness analysis of the sending rates, and implement the optimal FEC strategy in the path diversity framework under various network conditions.

From a source coding point of view, I design a network adaptive matching pursuits based multiple description video coding scheme for the proposed path diversity framework. Multiple description coding is an error resilient source coding scheme that generates multiple encoded bit streams of the source with the aim of providing an acceptable reconstruction quality of the source when only one description is received, and improved quality when multiple descriptions are available. The proposed network adaptive multiple description matching pursuits scheme is designed to optimally split the source into descriptions that are adapted to the network characteristics of each route, hence providing superior visual quality.

q Video, Image, and Network Protocol Standards

Video standards: 5+ years of experience with H.263, H.26L, MPEG2, MPEG4,

Image standards: JPEG, JPEG2000 standards.

Media Network Protocols: Implement RTP/RSTP for video streaming.

Microcomputer Research Lab

Intel Corporation

Research Engineer, 7/1995 – 8/1998

Graphics and volume visualization: - Design and develop graphics and volume visualization algorithms for interactive navigation in human body.

Computer architecture: - Design snooping protocol for caches in multi-processor Pentium II board.

Computer aid design software: - Design and develop database tools for circuit designs and VLSI layout.

Graphics Lab

Intel Corporation/Microsoft Corporation

Software Engineer, 4/1998 – 8/1998

DirectX : - Optimize geometry engine in DirectX for Pentium pipeline.

Siemens

Software Engineer, 1/1994 – 9/1994

PBX Switches: - Verify correctness of software/hardware for advanced PBX switches for central telephone office.

Teaching Experience

Digital Image Processing

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, U.C. Berkeley

Graduate-Student Instructor (Spring 2001)

This graduate-level course covers fundamental multi-dimensional signal processing concepts, together with practical algorithms for image enhancement, restoration, analysis, and compression. As a teaching assistant, I hold office hours, grade homework and projects.

Introduction to Computer Architecture and Programming Language

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, U.C. Berkeley

Graduate-Student Instructor (Fall 1998)

This course is aimed to introduce computer architecture and programming languages to undergraduate students. As a teaching assistant, I hold weekly discussion and lab section, design homework and grade examinations.

Computer Graphics

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Washington

Teaching Assistant (Spring 1995)

This undergraduate course covers fundamentals of modeling and rendering in computer graphics, together with various algorithms such as ray tracing and radiosity. As a teaching assistant, I hold office hours, grade homework and projects.

Undergraduate Physics and Math

Educational Opportunity Program, University of Washington

Tutor (1992-1994)

As a tutor, I help students with homework and understanding of the key concepts in physics and calculus.

Selected Publications

Books:

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, “Video Communication Over Packet-Switched Networks”, Claypool/Morgan, in preparation.

Journals:

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, “Video Communication Using Path Diversity System and Matching Pursuits based Multiple Description Video Codec”; Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Multimedia.

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, “Protocols and Algorithms for Distributed Video Streaming”; Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Multimedia.

· M. Brady, K. Jung, H.T. Nguyen; T. Nguyen, “Interactive Volume Navigation”; IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol.4, (no.3), IEEE, July-Sept. 1998. p.243-56

Conferences:

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, "Matching Pursuits Based Multiple Description Video Coding for Lossy Environment" (Invited Paper); International Conference on Image Processing 2003, Barcelona, Spain.

· T. Nguyen, P. Mehra, A. Zakhor, "Path Diversity and Bandwidth Allocation for Multimedia Streaming" (Invited Paper); International Conference on Multimedia and Expo 2003, Baltimore, MD, USA.

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, "Path Diversity with Forward Error Correction (PDF) System for Packet Switched Networks"; INFOCOM 2003, San Francisco CA, USA.

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, "Distributed Video Streaming with Forward Error Correction" (Best Paper Award); Packet Video Workshop 2002, Pittsburgh PA, USA.

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, "Protocols for Distributed Video Streaming"; International Conference on Image Processing 2002, Rochester NY, USA.

· T. Nguyen and A. Zakhor, "Distributed Video Streaming over the Internet"; SPIE, Conference on Multimedia Computing and Networking, San Jose, California, January 2002.

· T. Nguyen, A. Zakhor, and K. Yelick, “Performance Analysis of an H.263 Video Encoder for IRAM''; International Conference on Image Processing, Vancouver, Canada, September 2000.

· T. Nguyen, “ Performance Analysis of an H.263 Video Encoder for IRAM”; UCB Master Thesis 1999.

· M. Brady, K. Jung, H.T. Nguyen; T. Nguyen, “Two-phase Perspective Ray Casting for Interactive Volume Navigation”; Visualization '97 New York, NY, USA: IEEE, 1997.

· T. Nguyen, “Parallel Implementation of Shear-Warp Technique for Volume Visualization on Pentium II”; Intel Technical Report, 1996.

Honors and Organizations

· Best Paper Award at Packet Video Workshop, 2002

· Invited Talk at International Conference on Image Processing, 2003

· Invited Talk at International Conference and Multimedia Expo, 2003

· Berkeley First Year Fellowship

· University of Washington High Scholarship: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior

· University of Washington Dean’s List: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior

Professional Activities

Reviewer for

· IEEE Transactions On Circuits and Systems for Video Technology

· IEEE Transactions On Multimedia and Networking

· IEEE Transactions On Signal Processing

· IEEE Transactions On Image Processing

· Computer Network Magazine

References