Executive Summary

All over the world, companies are struggling to offer effective distance services (tele-services) with real-time interactivity and trying to come-up with complete domain specific solutions (for example for health and education) in order to reduce the gap between live and distance activity.

Use of information and communication technology can play a pivotal role for the provision of tele-education and tele-health services to remote and rural areas. Out of many issues to be addressed for the realization of such tele-services, one of the issues is the provision of a data communication service which supports sustainable data rates, redundancy, and performance as per requirement of the service.
There are multiple network interfaces available which can be used (aggregated bandwidth) to realize real-time interactivity for such applications.

The project proposes to develop a software based product to be used for bandwidth aggregation as per required quality of the service (QoS). It will develop a system that, using the available wireless and wired network interfaces, provides a dynamically aggregated bandwidth which can be used to offer services requiring sustainable data rates, redundancy, and real time performance.

The project will develop (design, optimize, implement- a research activity), and test a system (a software module- a development activity) for optimal utilization of multiple network interfaces by aggregating the available bandwidth to achieve the required quality of service of the application. The overall system comprises of multiple software components for effective handling and modularization of proposed bandwidth aggregation.

This research activity will include the formulation of a multi-constraint optimization of multi-service, multi-server scheduling algorithm with constraints of end to end delay, minimized re-order & buffering overhead. The optimization of the algorithm is planned to be carried out through simulation in Matlab/Simulink. The development portion includes the implementation of the optimized algorithm (a software system) to perform tasks like aggregation and flow state management, augmenting TCP/IP stack with new data structures to accommodate services proposed in the system, tunneling services, and capacity estimation. The developed system will be deployed on a test bed and shall be tested for real time live video and audio applications (distance services with interactivity) for e-Health and distance learning with interactivity. The test bed will be remotely located multi-media equipped PCs with multiple network interfaces to be used to show real-time interactive distance service.
 

The key benefits of this project are given below:

• It will develop a robust, maintainable, extendable system with all the standard documentations and open many opportunities for ICT industries to develop their product suite for multiple mode (networked) terminals (MMTs).
• Bandwidth Aggregation Router for interactive distance services will be developed.
• The system once developed will open numerous opportunities to offer services based on interactive voice and video connectivity for distance services such as interactive e-Health services providers for Patients; interactive distance learning service providers for students; and agriculture service providers for farmers.
• The project will benefit all major sectors of industry including telecom, e-government, and health-care. It will also benefit remote branches of commercial banks.