Infotech Oulu Annual Report 2004

Professor Jaakko Sauvola, Information Processing Laboratory,
Professor Timo Ojala and Professor Tapio Seppänen, Computer Engineering Laboratory,
Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Oulu
jaakko.sauvola

oulu.fi, timo.ojala

oulu.fi, tapio.seppanen

oulu.fi
http://www.mediateam.oulu.fi

Background and Mission

MediaTeam Oulu (MediaTeam), founded in 1997, is a research group of about 50 people at the Information Processing Laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Oulu. MediaTeam is a multidisciplinary research group, having researchers with backgrounds in electrical and information engineering, computer science, mathematics and linguistics.

MediaTeam’s mission is to carry out leading-edge long-term research which produces new scientific knowledge and novel technological solutions for mobile, distributed multimedia and communications.

MediaTeam conducts research on the features, use, and applications of multimedia and digital media types (image, sound, video, text) in information and communication systems. MediaTeam’s research brings together the different areas of information and telecommunications technology, with special focus on mobility and wireless features, as well as future generations of communication technology. MediaTeam’s main fields of interest are distributed computing, image and video processing, information hiding, language and audio technology, mobile services and packet networks.

Scientific Progress

The three-year-long CAPNET – Context-Aware Pervasive Networking research program, funded by the National Technology Agency of Finland and industry, was completed in 2004. CAPNET was one of the four national spearhead initiatives funded by the NETS – Networks of the Future technology programme. The goal of the CAPNET program was to create a foundation for new information and communications technologies, and for business in the field. The focus was on context aware mobile technologies for ubiquitous computing. These are technologies which allow communication anytime and anywhere, with any kind of terminal device, automatically taking into account the characteristics of the network and the terminal. The third and final year of CAPNET meant accelerated advancement in research: there were several working prototypes implemented based on the technologies developed during the program, and the international dissemination of results in the form of scientific publications accelerated as well. CAPNET architecture, distributed component architecture, was iteratively developed to its third version, providing the essential enabler and platform for the development of context-aware services. In the fundamental research, several academic theses were completed and several new theses were started. The CAPNET program produced about 35 scientific papers in total for conferences and journals, the majority, 21, being presented during the final program year – indicating how the three year research started to pay off and rose to the internationally acknowledged level. The basic research was carried out on essential domains of pervasive networking: service discovery, connectivity management, routine learning, user experience and adaptive media.

The component architecture developed in the CAPNET program contains several essential components, and it is managed by component management as one of core components on the PCDC – layer (Pervasive Computing, Data and Communications).

The mGain – Mobile Entertainment Industry and Culture project, funded by the EU under the Information Society Technologies (IST) program, was completed in March 2004. The project focused on various aspects of mobile entertainment, paying attention to technological, commercial, cultural, legal, and social features. The project resulted in analyses and surveys of the mobile entertainment industry and culture for use by EU authorities, the mobile entertainment industry and the scientific community. Particularly the needs and expectations of mobile entertainment users were considered in the research, emphasising service usability and pricing along with ethical and socio-economic issues. Research also included benchmarking the European situation with North America and Asia Pacific for drawing guidelines for the industry and political decision-makers, and to prepare mobile entertainment services and technologies within the 6th Framework Programme for research in the EU. The results are available at the project’s web-site (http://www.mgain.org) and they will benefit not only developers of new entertainment services, but also various authorities whose tasks include issues related to consumer protection and content regulation. In addition to taking part in state-of-the-art studies, benchmarking, focus group studies and overall work, MediaTeam carried the main responsibility in mapping and analysing the technological area of mobile entertainment for the project. The analysis included searching for the technological possibilities and, on the other hand, also the shortcomings of the current, emerging and future mobile and wireless technologies that affect to the development of the mobile entertainment market in Europe.

The Rotuaari – Context-aware Mobile Multimedia Services project funded by the National Technology Agency of Finland under the FENIX – Interactive Computing technology programme, an international industrial consortium and the city of Oulu continued in 2004. This multidisciplinary project approaches context-aware mobile multimedia services from a number of different, but complementary, viewpoints addressing the following issues: context-aware computing, mobile ubiquitous multimedia, consumer behavior, business and R&D networks, human computer interaction, security and safety, mobile learning and data mining. The three key components of the project are a multifaceted service system, large-scale field trials and value networks. The service system includes multiple wireless networks, versatile service platforms and a number of new prototype services developed by the project and industrial partners. The services are empirically evaluated in large-scale field trials in a true environment of use involving genuine end users and companies. The research is based on a seamless value network which is modelled for the purpose of recognising the necessary conditions and processes of an effective R&D network. In this way the project aims at stimulating a local ecosystem for producing new innovative mobile multimedia services based on viable business models. In 2004, the project organised three large field trials (Tierna-Jack, Mobile Kärpät, SmartRotuaari 2) and three smaller concept evaluations (SmartRestaurant, SmartLibrary 2, Multiaccess QoS). A large number of new prototype mobile services were developed for these trials, for example context-aware mobile advertising. The results are reported in a large number of scientific publications and theses. More detailed information is available at the project’s web site (http://www.rotuaari.net).

SmartLibrary is one of the service concepts developed in the Rotuaari project. The service allows library customers to browse the OULA library catalogue with mobile devices.

The All-IP – Application Supernetworking project funded by the National Technology Agency of Finland and industry started in February 2004. The project focuses on the research of All-IP lead applications implemented on top of intelligent middleware. In particular, peer-to-peer and plug-and-play communication paradigms are elaborated, both with innovative use cases and empirical studies in a practical testbed. The new concept of supernetworking ranges from simple file sharing applications utilising superdistribution to complex applications that use supersessions to combine media streams from various peers. Supersession is a new concept that combines the features of a rich call and a multisession. Terminals with different capabilities can communicate with each other using versatile session management and holistic connectivity management. The results of the first project year include a conceptual framework for application supernetworking and supersession management, the specification of the platform and application interfaces, and implementation of prototype services on Symbian OS in a real-world testing environment. The novel middleware Plug-and-Play Application Platform (PnPAP) developed in the project enables mobile P2P applications to communicate seamlessly using different communication protocols and connectivities. Application layer multi-protocol and connectivity adaptation are required due to the abundance of both non-interoperable communication protocols and overlaid networking technologies. Run-time parameterisation can be done with lightweight state machines that are designed with a graphical editor and transferred to the mobile phone over-the-air (OTA). A mobile file sharing prototype application based on PnPAP was developed for the Symbian S60 platform, demonstrating multi-device interoperability, All-IP communication concept and OTA upgrade of P2P communication protocols.

The Plug-and-Play application platform (PnPAP) enables application development independently of the underlying connectivity and communication protocols.

The Stego – Digital Rights Management Technology for Audio and Video Recordings and the Stardust – Business Analysis and Economic DRM Models in Mobile Distribution of Rich Digital Content projects, funded by the National Technology Agency of Finland and industry, were merged in spring 2004. The project is conducted jointly by the Department of Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and MediaTeam. The project focuses now on developing methods of digital watermarking and the use of cryptography in digital rights management (DRM), and on researching the mechanisms of electrical mobile commerce and the economic models related to the protection of digital contents as parts of future network and application services. During 2004, a DRM enabled multimedia player was implemented to a mobile phone that allows users to play and share protected digital content. The player is used to demonstrate new content protection methods and value added services that are being developed in the project, such as a secure counter to restrict the number of times content can be played and audio protection with encryption and watermarks. Nedeljko Cvejic completed his doctoral thesis entitled Algorithms for audio watermarking and steganography. The main results include many novel watermarking algorithms with state-of-the-art performance and an acceptable computational complexity for applications.

MediaTeam’s research program on content-based multimedia retrieval is realised in two ongoing research projects funded by the Academy of Finland: CBIR – Content-based Information Retrieval and Prosody of Emotions – Multiparametric Prosodic Analysis of Phonetic and Phonological Correlates of Emotions. The Semantic Gap – Filling of the Semantic Gap in Information Retrieval project was completed in 2004. This program investigated multimedia content analysis and its application in content-based video and audio retrieval systems. The main objective was to develop methods for narrowing down the “semantic gap” between the concept-based and content-based approaches to database indexing, and the utilization of these methods in practical retrieval applications. Filling the gap is important in order to enable the design of databases and search engines where it is easier to map user-specified search criteria in off-line/on-line computed index terms and the meta-data of the database. The problem is especially unresolved as regards forthcoming media types like digital speech, music, image, and image sequence, where the search criteria often include semantic concepts. The problem is tackled with a cross-disciplinary approach involving information engineering, linguistics, natural sciences, and information studies. One specific and important goal in our program is successful participation in the annual TRECVID competition. The purpose of the competition is to promote progress in content-based multimedia retrieval via open and well-defined evaluation. It is the premier international benchmark in multimedia retrieval, bringing together the world’s leading research groups in the field.

The VIRE video retrieval system is one of the main results of the program. VIRE is based on cluster-temporal browsing, a novel approach for interactive browsing and retrieval of large video databases. The approach combines the traditional time-line presentation of a video shot with that obtained by unsupervised multi-modal content-based clustering with self-organising maps into a single representation of the video database. The resulting 2-D view into the video database allows simultaneously efficient interactive navigation in two semantic spaces, temporal adjacency and content similarity. The view can be refined with optional semantic filtering, which corresponds to detecting the presence of any designated semantic concept(s) in the video data represented to the user. Additionally, VIRE supports manual query-based retrieval of video shots. The experimental results obtained at the international TRECVID 2004 competition showed that VIRE provides an efficient approach for realising interactive video retrieval.

International and Domestic Collaboration

During its seven years of operation, MediaTeam has networked with a wide cross-section of partners in the public sector and the business world. The group has been the main driver, for example, in developing community services for people in its home town of Oulu in northern Finland. Perhaps the best known of these services is panOULU (Public Access Network OULU), provided jointly by the University of Oulu, the City of Oulu, Oulu Polytechnic and Oulun Puhelin Plc. PanOULU is a unique public network that offers free wireless Internet access to everyone within its coverage area. MediaTeam has also been an active participant in developing the Octopus test environment, which offers 2–3G/EGDE radio coverage and service technologies, including presence, MMS, mobile payment, digital rights management, and information security, to users across Finland. The service system of the Rotuaari project, the Octopus test network administrated by the City of Oulu, and the panOULU network together form one of the world’s most dynamic real world testing environments – enabling new mobile services and applications to be developed and tested cost-effectively in a real environment without the risks typically involved in a commercial venture.

MediaTeam values close collaboration with its partners as an essential factor in conducting leading edge research and in transferring research results into practical solutions. The most important partners are the following funding bodies, companies, and research organisations: the National Technology Agency of Finland, the Academy of Finland, Ekahau, Elektrobit Group, Hantro, IBM, Nokia, OPOY/Finnet Group, Osuuskauppa Arina, Oulun Liikekeskus, Serv-It, Solid Information Technology, TeliaSonera Finland, VTT Electronics, Mobile Forum, City of Oulu, University of Maryland (USA), Linköping University (Sweden), Oulu Polytechnic, and various research groups and laboratories in Finland and at the University of Oulu.

Exploitation of Results

The research results have been disseminated to the academic community in the form of about 50 scientific publications. MediaTeam also places lots of emphasis on the popularisation of science, which has resulted in dozens of articles in major Finnish newspapers, some international newspapers, professional magazines and periodicals, radio and television interviews, teletext of the Finnish Broadcasting Company and on-line news archives.

A concrete example of the popularisation of science is the future video browser implemented for the Oulu Expo exhibition, which was opened at the Science Centre Tietomaa in Oulu in November 2004. The browser facilitates searching from a large video archive using novel content-based access and browsing technology. The video archive in the demonstration contains a 16-hour collection of news footage from Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE.

The future video browser facilitates efficient browsing of large video databases.

The results of the long-term basic research have also been exploited in subcontracted research projects commissioned by local industry, which provide an efficient form of technology transfer. For example, the new digital watermarking methodology developed in our research group has been utilised in several innovative application demonstrations.

Future Goals

MediaTeam will continue to strive towards becoming one of the leading authorities in multimedia research. MediaTeam will pursue its goals of providing practical, easily adaptable solutions to the multimedia application industry and of performing eminent research in its fields of expertise. MediaTeam will remain in active contact with industry as a whole, as well as its existing partners, and strengthen and develop its international network. MediaTeam will further improve its innovation processes, to ensure an even more efficient manner of transforming research results into the practical applications.

Personnel

External Funding

Doctoral theses

Selected Publications

Aalto L, Göthlin N, Korhonen J & Ojala T (2004) Bluetooth and WAP Push based location-aware mobile advertising system. Proc. Second International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services, Boston, MA, 49–58.

Aittola M, Parhi P, Vieruaho M & Ojala T (2004) Comparison of mobile and fixed use of SmartLibrary. Proc. 6th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, Glasgow, Scotland, 383–387.

Cvejic N & Seppänen T (2004) Spread spectrum audio watermarking using frequency hopping and attack characterization. Signal Processing 84(1):207–213.

Harjula E, Ylianttila M, Ala-Kurikka J, Riekki J & Sauvola J (2004) Plug-and-play application platform: Towards mobile peer-to-peer. Proc. Third International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, College Park, MD, 63–69.

Iivonen A, Seppänen T, Noponen K & Toivanen J (2004) Puhujan temporaalisen äänialan visualisointisovellus. Puhe ja kieli 24(1):5–16 (in Finnish).

Khungar S & Riekki J (2004) A context based data management system for pervasive computing collaborative applications. Proc. ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Chicago, IL.

Lilja J, Juuso I, Kortelainen T, Seppänen T & Suominen V (2004) Mitä katsoja kertoo elokuvasta – elokuvan sisäisten elementtien tunnistaminen ja sisällönkuvailu. Informaatiotutkimus 23(3):59–69 (in Finnish).

Ojala T, Korhonen J, Sutinen T, Parhi P & Aalto L (2004) Mobile Kärpät – A case study in wireless personal area networking. Proc. Third International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, College Park, MD, 149–156.

Ojala T, Koskela M, Matinmikko E, Rautiainen M, Laaksonen J & Oja E (2004) Task-based user evaluation of content-based image database browsing systems. Proc. 3rd International Conference on Image and Video Retrieval, Dublin, Ireland, 234–243.

Rautiainen M, Ojala T & Seppänen T (2004) Cluster-temporal browsing of large news video databases. Proc. 2004 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, Taipei, Taiwan, 2:751–754.

Seydou F, Duraiswami R, Gumerov NA & Seppänen T (2004) TM electromagnetic scattering from multilayered dielectric bodies – numerical solution. ACES Journal 19(2):100–107.

Sun J, Riekki J, Jurmu M & Sauvola J (2004) Design and implementation of Java-based HTTP input channel for integrated WLAN and GPRS networks. Proc. 12th IEEE International Conference on Networks, Singapore, 258–262.

Toivanen J (2004) Pitch dynamism of English produced by proficient non-native speakers: preliminary results of a corpus-based analysis of second language speech. Proc. FONETIK 2004, Stockholm, Sweden, 48–51.