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MediaTeam Oulu
Dr. 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(at)oulu.fi, timo.ojala(at)oulu.fi, tapio.seppanen(at)oulu.fi
MediaTeam Oulu (MediaTeam), founded in 1997, is a research group of about 40 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 and linguistics. 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 main research topics are distributed computing, image and video processing, information hiding, language and audio technology, mobile services and packet networks. The research is carried out in a number of projects, the most important of which are briefly described below.
The All-IP - Application Supernetworking research project funded by TEKES and industry concluded in 2007. The project explored a novel communication paradigm where features of several applications can be combined to improve group communication. A service platform and several prototype applications were implemented to Symbian mobile phones. The performance and usability of the solutions were analysed with measurements and end user tests.
The CAPNET - Context-Aware Pervasive Networking research program funded by TEKES and industry concluded in 2007. CAPNET aimed at developing the essential foundation for new information and communications technologies in the context-aware mobile ubiquitous computing domain. One of the main results of the project was the CAPNET Middleware, a lightweight system framework for pervasive computing supporting the development of ubiquitous applications and services for Symbian mobile phones. The CAPNET middleware is available for download under an open source license at MediaTeam’s website.
The panOULU - The Citizen’s Network project of the COMPETENCE Oulu 400 Program, funded jointly by the City of Oulu and the University of Oulu, concluded in 2007. The goal of the project was to provide our expertise on wireless networks for the use of the City of Oulu’s COMPETENCE Oulu 400 program and the panOULU network. Additionally, two related special projects funded by the City of Oulu, panOULU LBS and panOULU CRRD, were executed in 2007. The panOULU LBS project developed the panOULU Luotsi service (http://luotsi.panoulu.net) which aggregates various information feeds into a location-based information service for the users of the panOULU network. The panOULU CRRD project focused on improving the fault tolerance of panOULU’s core services.
The Zirion - Mobile Media Containing Value Adding Services project funded by TEKES and industry continued in 2007. The project focuses on integrating digital watermarking technologies into new value-adding services to the mobile environment. Methods for extracting watermarks from pictures taken with a camera or scanned from printed images were demonstrated. New audio protection techniques were developed that utilize watermarks as unique fingerprints and removable teaser-markers.
The CAM4Home - Collaborative Aggregated Multimedia for Digital Home project funded by TEKES started in 2007. The project is a part of the pan-European ITEA 2 program. The objective of the project is to create a metadata-enabled content delivery framework which allows end users and commercial content providers to create and deliver rich multimedia experiences for networked communities. Our task is to develop novel content-based metadata enrichment services for a common multimedia delivery platform.
The DECICOM – Decentralized Inter-Service Communications project funded by TEKES and industry started in 2007. MediaTeam coordinates the project and the consortium includes many leading companies and universities spearheading the global standardization of the technologies in focus. Fundamental research issues include P2P-based technology enablers for distributed mobile applications and new types of business scenarios around them. The project has made a concrete impact on the international standardization work of the essential enabling technology, Peer-to-Peer SIP, by prototyping the first mobile P2P SIP implementation in collaboration with the Nokia Research Centre. Another research issue is the interoperability between P2P and traditional client/server networks, such as IMS.
The ExpeShare – Experience sharing in Mobile Peer Communities project funded by TEKES started in 2007. The project belongs to the pan-European ITEA 2 program, and the international project consortium comprises of partners from Finland, France, Spain and Italy. The project focuses on developing service architecture for supporting converged multimedia services and experience sharing in communities over peer-to-peer networks. The key research topics include convergence of web and peer-to-peer services, service discovery mechanisms, mobile and Internet communities, community context management and utilization of RFID technologies in service access.
The UbiLife project funded by TEKES and industry started in 2007. The project is a part of the UBI R&D program, whose objective is to develop a prototype of the future ubiquitous city. It involves long-term basic research on urban computing, investment in new types of ubiquitous computing infrastructure, and “living lab” research for developing and evaluating novel types of prototype applications and services in the true environment of use with genuine end users. The multidisciplinary project consortium includes research groups from the University of Oulu, the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, the University of Art and Design Helsinki, and the University of Lapland.
The Digital Watermarking of Speech and Holograms project funded by the Academy of Finland started in 2007. The project focuses on digital rights management technologies, especially digital watermarking of speech signals and holographic data. The international research partners participating in the research project include the Department of Computer Science from the National University of Ireland and the Centre for Communications Research from the University of Bristol.
MediaTeam celebrated its 10-year history by organizing MUM 2007, the 6th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, in Oulu on 12-14 December 2007. The 10th anniversary party was held in conjunction with the conference banquet at the Science Centre Tietomaa. The “A Decade of Research” history providing a compact review of MediaTeam’s firs ten years was also published and is available online at http://www.mediateam.oulu.fi/history.
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The chairs of the MUM 2007 conference posing with the recipients of the best papers awards. From left: Professor Timo Ojala, Dominik Schnitzer (Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria), Peter Peltonen (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland) and Professor Mika Ylianttila. |
Personnel
professors & doctors |
8 |
graduate students |
14 |
others |
15 |
total |
37 |
person years |
30 |
External Funding
Source |
EUR |
Academy of Finland |
238 000 |
Ministry of Education |
47 000 |
Tekes |
701 000 |
other domestic public |
47 000 |
domestic private |
375 000 |
international |
65 000 |
total |
1 473 000 |
Selected Publications
Cvejic N & Seppänen T (editors) (2007) Digital Audio Watermarking Techniques and Technologies: Applications and Benchmarks. IGI Global, Hershey, PA.
Davidyuk O, Selek I, Ceberio J & Riekki J (2007) Application of micro-genetic algorithm for task based computing. Proc. 2007 International Conference on Intelligent Pervasive Computing, Jeju Island, Korea, 140-145.
Hosio S, Kawsar F, Riekki J & Nakajima T (2007) Utilizing everyday artefacts for content sharing. Proc. 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Innsbruck, Austria, 204-207.
Kassinen O, Ylianttila M, Sun J-Z & Ala-Kurikka J (2007) Top-down connectivity policy framework for mobile peer-to-peer applications. Proc. Fourth Annual IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, Las Vegas, NV, 560-564.
Korhonen J, Ojala T, Ristola A, Kesti M, Kilpelänaho V, Koskinen M & Viippola E (2007) Mobile Fair Diary - Hybrid interface for taking, browsing and sharing context-aware notes. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 11(7): 577-589.
Koskela T, Kostamo N, Kassinen O, Ohtonen J & Ylianttila M (2007) Towards context-aware mobile web 2.0 service architecture. Proc. International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies, Papeete, French Polynesia, 41-48. Best Paper Award.
Kostamo N, Kassinen O, Koskela T & Ylianttila M (2007) Analysis of concept and incentives for digital content superdistribution. Proc. 6th Conference on Telecommunication Techno-Economics, Helsinki, Finland.
Löytynoja M, Cvejic N & Seppänen T (2007) Audio protection using removable watermarking. Proc. Sixth International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing, Singapore, 1-4.
Ojala T & Ylianttila M (editors) (2007) Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, Oulu, Finland. ACM Press, New York, NY.
Sun J-Z, Riekki J, Sauvola J & Jurmu M (2007) Policy mechanism and evaluation algorithm for connectivity management adaptability. International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications 3(1): 57-81.
Toivanen J & Henrichsen PJ (editors) (2007) Current Trends in Research on Spoken Language in the Nordic Countries, volume II. Oulu University Press, Finland.
Väyrynen P, Noponen K & Seppänen T (2007) Analysing performance in a word prediction system with multiple prediction methods. Computer Speech and Language 21: 479-491.