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                Distributed Multimedia Computing
                     at Lancaster University

       (School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematical
                            Sciences)



The  Lancaster  University   Distributed   Multimedia   Computing
Research Group is an internationally known research group of some
25 people, comprised of academic staff, research  assistants  and
postgraduate  research  students.  The  group  has several inter-
related research projects receiving sponsorship from industry and
UK and European research bodies.

Research assistants are required for the following  new  projects
for which funding has recently been received.


MOST:  MOBILE  OPEN  SYSTEMS  TECHNOLOGIES  FOR   THE   UTILITIES
INDUSTRIES

MOST is a two year project focussing on the application  of  Open
Distributed  Processing  in  the Utilities Industries. One of the
key features of the Utilities Industries is the need to access  a
wide  range of information in the field. However, this introduces
a number of technical challenges for ODP:-

i) the impact of mobile communications;

ii) integrated access to information services;

iii) the need to support multimedia information.

The MOST project will address these  technical  issues  and  will
develop   an  ODP-  based  distributed  systems  platform,  which
integrates mobile communications, a range of information services
(including   a  Geographic  Information  System)  and  multimedia
capabilities.  The  MOST  project  is  a  collaboration   between
Lancaster  University  and EA Technology in Chester and is funded
by the SERC/DTI ODSA programme.


THE SUMO PROJECT: SUPPORT  FOR  MULTIMEDIA  IN  OPEN  DISTRIBUTED
PROCESSING

The purpose of  the  SUMO  project  is  to  provide  support  for
multimedia,  particularly  continuous media such as digital video
and audio, in an Open Distributed Processing  (ODP)  environment.
In  more  detail,  the aim of the SUMO is to develop enhanced and
integrated  computational  and  engineering  models  to   support
multimedia  in  an Open Distributed Processing environment. These
models will be verified by a prototype  implementation  based  on
the  Chorus  micro-kernel.  The  essence  of  the  research is to
support both Quality of Service (QOS)  guarantees  and  real-time
synchronisation    as    required   by   distributed   multimedia
applications. The research is also expected to contribute to  the
on-going  developments of micro-kernel based architectures in the
areas of real-time processing and multimedia support.   The  SUMO
work is currently supported through internal funds.


A  QUALITY  OF  SERVICE  ARCHITECTURE  (QOS-A)   FOR   MULTIMEDIA
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS

This project will  develop  a  Quality  of  Service  Architecture
(QOS-A),  encompassing  communications  and  distributed  systems
support, in which QOS guarantees may be provided for  interactive
continuous   media   applications   operating  over  multiservice
networks. The QOS-A will  provide  integrated  resource  control,
monitoring and regulation strategies necessary for the support of
continuous media in broadband packet networks. The research  will
build  on  previous  projects  at Lancaster in multimedia network
interfaces (the MNI project) and on new transport  services  (the
OSI 95 project).

The main aims of the project are to:

i) define a QOS Architecture that  reconciles  the  User-oriented
QOS  requirements  with the Network-oriented  QOS environment for
distributed multimedia applications;

ii)  integrate  this  QOS-A  into  multi-service   communications
networks,  in  particular  those  based on ATM technology, in the
context of a  local  ATM  network  that  is  being  developed  at
Lancaster;

iii) demonstrate the applicability of the architecture in a small
number    of   interactive   real-time   distributed   multimedia
application scenarios;

iv) introduce the results of  the  work  into  the  Open  Systems
standardisation  process  (specifically the ISO New Work Item  on
QOS).

The QOS-A  project  is  funded  jointly  by  the  SERC  Specially
Promoted  Programme  in  Integrated  Multi-Service  Communication
Networks and by Netcomm Ltd.


If you are interested in further details, please send  e.mail  to
the  following  address, if possible with brief information about
your experience and research interests:

Contact     address:      mpgadv@comp.lancs.ac.uk

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