AVID-MODE · Efficient Location-Aware Audio-Visual Delivery of High-Quality Content to Mobile Devices

At the dawn of the new millennium, we have witnessed a proliferation of mobile devices whose functionality goes well beyond their initial use as telephones. Nowadays, apart from mobile phones, we have in our disposal geographic positioning devices, personal organisers, email and text communication assistants, music players which can store thousands of songs, and video players with medium-definition capabilities. It is becoming increasingly apparent that mobile devices should achieve a greater level of integration regarding the services they offer. The goal is that soon it will be possible to own a single inexpensive high-quality mobile gizmo, which can be used as a tele- and video- phone, email client, MP3 player, document and spreadsheet processor, GPS locator, and so forth. In addition, most mobile devices now include some sort of navigation capability, either through the integration of a standard GPS module, or through the clever use of the cellular network topology and signal strength. In this project, our focus is on the enhancement of high-quality video, sound, and television delivery capabilities of mobile devices that will enable them to provide interactive and immersive media applications. We will address limitations to current audio and video coding methods which restrict the use of mobile devices to offering only a low-quality streaming media presentation to the user. In order to overcome these limitations, novel algorithms which go well beyond the currently developed techniques and concepts are needed. An important aspect of this project is the conscious exploitation of the location awareness that these new devices offer, for dynamically adapting the delivery of multimedia content. The proposed consortium consists of partners with complementary expertise which covers all the involved research areas, from the point of capturing the media content to the point that it is dynamically presented through a location aware mobile device to the user.