CalTrans Testbed Center for Interoperability (TCFI)
Mohammad Battah
Internship report
This is my third internship report describing the tasks I have executed for the last Quarter. Three major tasks were executed as follows:
·
Arranging Local Area Network for our new office, and connect
our segment to UCSB backbone.
·
Trained on using UML to generate an object oriented code
using Java and C++.
·
Test MPEG 4 standard using different wireless communication
protocols mainly CDPD and 802.11b.
New Local Area Network:
One of my ongoing tasks is network
administrator for our office as well as support for e-mail and web services.
Our office has been recently located to an off campus location. My main duty
was to supervise the installation of the local area network cabling and the
distribution points for the Ether net ports in the office. The connection
between our segment and UCSB backbone was carried out by GTE using OC12 fiber
link.
With reference to my second
internship report the e-mail server was upgraded from Linux 5.2 to 7.0 due to
security issues arouse by UCSB network security office. During this quarter I
did monitor the in- coming traffic on the open ports in a daily bases to ensure
that the e-mail server was not hacked into. Furthermore, all the RPM packages
were upgraded as they became available from Redhat Linux. Lastly, under my
direct supervision Ying Yan (student Assistance) preformed the regular upgrades
and the maintenance required for our web server - Testbed center for intraoprobibility (TCFI).
Unified Modeling language (UML) training:
Under task order 301 and task
order 303 an extensive knowledge is needed to develop an Object Oriented (OO)
programs. With reference to my second internship report a complete flow charts
for 2070 controller were generated from C code currently running the traffic
controller. UML training was needed to continue the development of an OO
program for the 2070 traffic controller signal. Accordingly, I attended a full
training course on how to Implement a UML diagrams. Due to the fact that we did
move from our office I was not able to produce a tangible results. However, the
work on UML diagrams will be implemented over the next few weeks.
MPEG 4 Standard:
Under Task order 301 Testbed
center for intraoprobibility is responsible for the examination of the
different possibilities for Signal Processing, Imaging and Image
Analysis (MPEG4, packet video, etc.) to support next generation surveillance,
multimedia data exchange.
This responsibility came due to
the fact that Caltrans urban Districts provide traffic surveillance and
incident verification information to their Transportation Management Centers
(TMC). TMC to TMC video communications is one of the most bandwidth demanding
applications within Caltrans. TCFI is currently investigating many aspects of this
application including the CORBA A/V streaming standards and MPEG-H.32X
interoperability.
Since Mpeg-4 was designed for
coding of progressive and interlaced video at transmission speeds down to 64
kb/s. It was designed to be able to represent units of aural, visual or
audiovisual content, called "media objects", as separate entities
that can be independently manipulated without affecting the rest of the scene.
These media objects can be of natural or synthetic origin, in other words,
recorded with a camera or microphone, or generated with a computer. They can be
grouped together to create new media objects or entire scenes. In addition,
MPEG 4 provides coding to multiplex and re-synchronize the data associated with
various media objects so they can be transported over respective network
channels that provide a QOS (Quality of Service) appropriate to the
requirements (data transmission rates, bit error rates, etc.) of the specific
media objects. Finally, there is coding
that allows interaction with the audiovisual scene generated at the receiver’s
end. This was the third MPEG standard to be developed. Version 1 was approved
in October of 1998, and version 2 had been scheduled for approval as an
international standard in December of 1999, but is still pending.
Accordingly, it was the choice to
start investigating the possibility of using MPEG 4 as a standard to be used to
stream A/V over a slow wireless links such as CDPD or 802.11b (Outdoor). Packet Video Inc. did provide a complete software
package, which has the capability of encode, decode and stream the images over
the Internet with a different transmission rate (9600 to custom settings).
Figure (1) shows the over all system and the wireless communication protocol used
to examine streaming A/V over the Internet.
PV Author server software:
PV Author server is responsible
for the communication between the web server and the encoder software (PV
author), which is installed on the digital video source. The video source usually
is a computer system connected to a digital video camera. PV Arthur was
developed to run Under Linux 6.2 OS.
Accordingly, to be able to
broadcast the A/V over the Internet, the first step was to install the Linux
6.2 and configure apache server. I did not encounter any problems at this stage
of installation. The second step was to install and test PV Author server
software. A configuration parameters where changed in pvserver.conf file such
as the host name of the server to be able to communicate with the web server
and the video source.
Finally, testing was made to make
sure that the server is able to stream A/V from a sample files available on the
server (http://128.111.247.101).
PV-PC Author Software:
This is the actual Encoder
software, typically installed on the computer system, which has the digital
video source. From this program the bit rate and frames per second to be
transmitted are determined among other parameters. Such parameters are
influenced by the type of the wireless link is used to view the A/V.
PC Client Software:
This software are installed on the
target computer system that needs to view the video, no configuration
parameters are required.
Testing the system:
Over the next two weeks we will
test this system using different wireless communication protocols, mainly CDPD
and Wireless LAN Protocol. For these propose I did set up IPAQ 3650 H hand held
device with a CDPD modem. Furthermore, I did install an Indoor wireless LAN.
The testing will be preformed next week.