Rittwik Jana

Xiaopeng Jiang, Shuai Zhao, Guy Jacobson et al.

Fine-grained location prediction on smart phones can be used to improve app/system performance. Application scenarios include video quality adaptation as a function of the 5G network quality at predicted user locations, and augmented reality apps that speed up content rendering based on predicted user locations. Such use cases require prediction error in the same range as the GPS error, and no existing works on location prediction can achieve this level of accuracy. We present a system for fine-grained location prediction (FGLP) of mobile users, based on GPS traces collected on the phones. FGLP has two components: a federated learning framework and a prediction model. The framework runs on the phones of the users and also on a server that coordinates learning from all users in the system. FGLP represents the user location data as relative points in an abstract 2D space, which enables learning across different physical spaces. The model merges Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), where BiLSTM learns the speed and direction of the mobile users, and CNN learns information such as user movement preferences. FGLP uses federated learning to protect user privacy and reduce bandwidth consumption. Our experimental results, using a dataset with over 600,000 users, demonstrate that FGLP outperforms baseline models in terms of prediction accuracy. We also demonstrate that FGLP works well in conjunction with transfer learning, which enables model reusability. Finally, benchmark results on several types of Android phones demonstrate FGLP's feasibility in real life.

Tarek Elgamal, Shu Shi, Varun Gupta et al.

Recent advances in computer vision and neural networks have made it possible for more surveillance videos to be automatically searched and analyzed by algorithms rather than humans. This happened in parallel with advances in edge computing where videos are analyzed over hierarchical clusters that contain edge devices, close to the video source. However, the current video analysis pipeline has several disadvantages when dealing with such advances. For example, video encoders have been designed for a long time to please human viewers and be agnostic of the downstream analysis task (e.g., object detection). Moreover, most of the video analytics systems leverage 2-tier architecture where the encoded video is sent to either a remote cloud or a private edge server but does not efficiently leverage both of them. In response to these advances, we present SIEVE, a 3-tier video analytics system to reduce the latency and increase the throughput of analytics over video streams. In SIEVE, we present a novel technique to detect objects in compressed video streams. We refer to this technique as semantic video encoding because it allows video encoders to be aware of the semantics of the downstream task (e.g., object detection). Our results show that by leveraging semantic video encoding, we achieve close to 100% object detection accuracy with decompressing only 3.5% of the video frames which results in more than 100x speedup compared to classical approaches that decompress every video frame.

Michele Polese, Rittwik Jana, Velin Kounev et al.

The fifth generation of cellular networks (5G) will rely on edge cloud deployments to satisfy the ultra-low latency demand of future applications. In this paper, we argue that such deployments can also be used to enable advanced data-driven and Machine Learning (ML) applications in mobile networks. We propose an edge-controller-based architecture for cellular networks and evaluate its performance with real data from hundreds of base stations of a major U.S. operator. In this regard, we will provide insights on how to dynamically cluster and associate base stations and controllers, according to the global mobility patterns of the users. Then, we will describe how the controllers can be used to run ML algorithms to predict the number of users in each base station, and a use case in which these predictions are exploited by a higher-layer application to route vehicular traffic according to network Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We show that the prediction accuracy improves when based on machine learning algorithms that rely on the controllers' view and, consequently, on the spatial correlation introduced by the user mobility, with respect to when the prediction is based only on the local data of each single base station.

Rajeev Kumar, Robert S Margolies, Rittwik Jana et al.

With the evolution of HDTV and Ultra HDTV, the bandwidth requirement for IP-based TV content is rapidly increasing. Consumers demand uninterrupted service with a high Quality of Experience (QoE). Service providers are constantly trying to differentiate themselves by innovating new ways of distributing content more efficiently with lower cost and higher penetration. In this work, we propose a cost-efficient wireless framework (WiLiTV) for delivering live TV services, consisting of a mix of wireless access technologies (e.g. Satellite, WiFi and LTE overlay links). In the proposed architecture, live TV content is injected into the network at a few residential locations using satellite dishes. The content is then further distributed to other homes using a house-to-house WiFi network or via an overlay LTE network. Our problem is to construct an optimal TV distribution network with the minimum number of satellite injection points, while preserving the highest QoE, for different neighborhood densities. We evaluate the framework using realistic time-varying demand patterns and a diverse set of home location data. Our study demonstrates that the architecture requires 75 - 90% fewer satellite injection points, compared to traditional architectures. Furthermore, we show that most cost savings can be obtained using simple and practical relay routing solutions.