A distributed synchronization scheme for multimedia streams in mobile systems: proof and correctness

Abstract

The rapid development in portable computing platforms, distributed multimedia systems and wireless communication technologies has led to a significant interest in mobile multimedia and wireless networking. Video entertainment and multimedia Internet access over wireless networks are examples of future wireless personal communication systems. These, however, incur challenging technological issues. The synchronization of the multimedia objects among mobile clients is one of the most important of these issues. The task of synchronization in wireless multimedia systems is to eliminate variations and delays incurred during the transmission of multiple-media streams and to maintain the temporal order among the various media streams. We propose an efficient distributed multimedia synchronization algorithm for wireless and mobile multimedia systems to ensure and facilitate mobile clients' access to multimedia objects. We discuss the algorithm and provide its formal proof and correctness.