Network and Multimedia Systems Lab (NMSL)
Welcome to the Network Systems Lab (NSL) at SFU!
We are interested in the broad areas of multimedia networking and multimedia systems. We develop algorithms and systems to efficiently distribute multimedia content to large-scale user communities over wired and wireless networks. The Network Systems Lab is led by Dr. Mohamed Hefeeda. and it is located in the TASC1 building, room 8210.
We hold regular group meeting for discussion and brainstorming.
Our current research interests include mobile multimedia, immersive and 3D video streaming, and cloud support for mobile and multimedia systems. Brief description and links to currently active projects are given below.
Multimedia Networking
We are focusing on distributed streaming in dynamic environments and for heterogeneous clients. Our goal is to analyze and understand scalable coding techniques, and to design several optimization and streaming algorithms to make the best possible use of them in real multimedia systems. This will yield better quality for users, and more efficient utilization of network and server resources. We are also designing algorithms to optimize streaming quality for wireless and mobile clients.
Cloud Computing
We are exploring the opportunities of utilizing new architectures such as GPUs, multi-core processors, and distributed clusters (cloud computing) to efficiently solve research problems related to multimedia content analysis, large-scale data analysis, and machine learning techniques. We are also designing novel cloud services, such as Automation as Service.
Concluded Projects
Peer-to-Peer Systems
We are exploring the applicability of the P2P paradigm to build cost-effective content distribution systems. Problems such as sender selection, adaptive object replication, and content caching are being studied. We are also developing models to analyze the new characteristics of the P2P traffic and the impact of these characteristics on the cache replacement policies and object replication strategies. Furthermore, we are devising analytic models to study the dynamics of the P2P system capacity and the impact of various parameters on it.
Online Networked Games
We are designing various algorithms to improve the performance of online games.
Network Security
We are exploring network monitoring techniques to detect and thwart intrusion and denial-of-service attacks in their early stages by observing unusual traffic patterns injected by such attacks. We are studying the security of multimedia streaming systems that employ multi-layer and fine-grain scalable video streams.
Wireless Sensor Networks
We are developing coverage and connectivity maintenance protocols that consider probabilistic (i.e., more realistic) sensing and communication models. We are also designing protocols that provide controllable degrees of coverage (k-coverage).
