Resource Management for Distributed Multimedia Systems

This work addresses the problems and challenges of handling several continuous- media data streams in networked multimedia environments, demonstrating how resource management mechanisms can be integrated into a stream handling system. The resulting system includes functions for Quality of Service (QoS) calculations, scheduling, determination of resource requirements, and methods to reduce resource requirements. The work explains the following: a suitable system architecture and resource management scheme that allows for the provision and enforcement of QoS guarantee; resource scheduling mechanisms for CPU and buffer space; mechanisms to measure and collect resource requirements; methods to extend resource management to future scenarios by allowing the reservation of resources in advance and offering sealing mechanisms. This text presents a view of resource management for a broad technical audience that includes computer scientists and engineers involved in developing multimedia applications.