Multi-Device Session Coordination for Adaptive Stream Quality
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Communication between multiple devices in group sessions, such as audio/video conferences, faces challenges with providing optimal user experience due to varying network conditions and audio delays, leading to suboptimal participation by users.
Innovation Solution
A system that jointly manages and coordinates multiple devices in a group communication session, ensuring high-quality audio and video streams, uniform audio delay, and seamless device transitions, using a server to facilitate communication and manage bandwidth and latency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple devices participate in group communication sessions with varying network conditions, then communication versatility is improved, but audio delay uniformity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously monitors network conditions and audio delay at each device, then feeds back this information to the communication manager. Based on this feedback, the system dynamically adjusts transmission parameters and buffering strategies to maintain uniform audio delay across all devices despite varying network conditions, thereby resolving the contradiction between communication versatility and audio delay uniformity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically changes transmission parameters such as buffer sizes, transmission rates, and packet scheduling based on real-time network conditions at each device. By adapting these parameters individually for each device while maintaining overall synchronization, the system enables diverse network conditions to coexist while achieving uniform audio delay.
2Reliability
If high-quality audio and video streams are transmitted to all devices, then communication quality is improved, but network bandwidth consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements local quality adaptation by tailoring the quality of audio and video streams to each individual device's network conditions and capabilities. Instead of uniformly transmitting high-quality streams to all devices, the system adjusts stream quality locally for each device based on its specific network bandwidth, ensuring optimal communication quality while minimizing overall bandwidth consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts stream quality and bandwidth allocation in real-time based on changing network conditions. When network conditions deteriorate at any device, the system automatically reduces stream quality for that specific device while maintaining high quality for devices with good network conditions, thereby balancing communication quality with bandwidth efficiency.
3Ease of operation
If devices independently manage their own communication streams, then device autonomy is improved, but coordination complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces a communication manager as an intermediary component that coordinates between multiple devices. This manager handles the complex tasks of synchronizing audio streams, managing buffering strategies, and coordinating network resource allocation. By centralizing coordination logic in this intermediary, each device can maintain autonomy in its local operations while the overall system achieves coherent multi-device communication.
Data Source
AI summary
A device implementing the subject technology may include at least one processor configured to receive downlink condition reports from device, each downlink condition report indicating a downlink channel condition of a respective device. The at least one processor is further configured to determine an uplink channel condition for each of the devices. The at least one processor is further configured to determine, for each respective device and based at least in part on the downlink condition reports and the uplink channel conditions, quality tiers, each of the quality tiers indicating a quality of at least one of an audio stream or a video stream. The at least one processor is further configured to provide for transmission, to each respective device, the quality tiers determined for the respective device.