ESMEE - Earth and Space Multimedia systems Enhancements and Extensions

  • Status
    Completed
  • Status date
    2014-12-09
Objectives

The proposed platform will offer the following technical enhancements and extensions to the existing platform:

 

  • Quality of Service for terrestrial segments,
  • Development and implementation of advanced reservation via RSVP management,
  • Privacy guarantee and attack prevention,
  • Conditional access manager,
  • Billing and accounting,
  • Teacher-driven synchronous browsing,
  • Client application: installer and user interface,
  • Multicast whiteboard.

 

The proposed platform will be more scalable and flexible than the existing one.

 

Strategic value: the service centre of the proposed platform will:

 

  • Serve a larger number of customers at the same time,
  • Fulfil a broader domain of customer requirements,

thus contributing to a higher market adaptability.

 

Strategic value:

 

  • The service centre of the proposed platform will contribute to a higher market adaptability,
  • On the proposed platform, it will be more likely customers are willing to pay for value adding services,
  • It will employ less enterprise resources to perform a heavier workload, making the initiative more profitable and competitive,
  • It will be much more suitable for eLearning and newTraining applications,
  • Deployment, distribution and diffusion of the proposed platform will lower the entry threshold to market.
Challenges

The integration of different media to develop and implement technology that will work well in schools, universities and homes with the minimum of user and supplier intervention.

 

The integration and testing of a Satellite Service Centre that, although assessed against the distance learning requirements, can be easily evolved toward new classes of services.

 

The identification of the right mix of integration between satellite and terrestrial based telecommunication infrastructure to be commercially sustainable.

 

The implementation of an academic instrumentation and learning system in the field of business to increase European competitiveness.

Benefits

The establishment of a self sustainable multimedia Service Centre in the South of Italy.

 

The development of a new educational model for making teachers accept the new teaching techniques and for integrating students in the new process.

 

The consolidation of a business model combining all the actors in the multimedia service market, whic are fully represented in the project.

 

The design and demonstration of how to play an active role in the multimedia marketplace.

 

The increment of customisable learning and training systems able to increase a user friendly approach for distance learning methods.

 

The penetration of the decreasing costs and increasing usability of technology.

 

Achieving loyalty in a marketplace currently characterised as a niche market.

Features

ESMEE system architecture has a number of functional enhancements and extensions added to the basic services offered by the distance learning platform currently operated by the partners.

 

It basically consists of:

 

a) Real-time delivery audio and video streaming by satellite of university lessons,

 

b) Synchronous (real-time) teacher/students textual chat interaction by terrestrial Internet link,

 

c) Asynchronous individual access to a video server for retrieving lessons by Internet,

 

d) Quality of Service for terrestrial segments,

 

e) Development and implementation of advanced reservation via RSVP management,

 

f) Privacy guarantee and attack prevention,

 

g) Conditional access manager,

 

h) Billing and accounting,

 

i) Teacher-driven synchronous browsing,

 

j) Multicast whiteboard,

 

k) Content provision and test.

 

The test phase has seen different communities at work:

 

a) a University community made of isolated students at home attending lessons of a special course provided by UniLE.

 

b) a business community made of groups of clerks gathered in remote classrooms. They all will follow lessons about marketing, new product, new software tools etc.

 

The applications provided are:

 

  • QoSs Manager at the lesson's site and at the service centre,
  • RSVP (QoS protocol) supported at all the routers along the path between the lesson's site and the service centre,
  • RSVP Advanced Reservation supported at all the routers along the path between the lesson's site and the service centre,
  • Encrypting application for the video stream at the service centre,
  • Decrypting application embedded in hardware at each receiving side,
  • Access manager for all the servers at the service centre,
  • Billing and Accounting application at the service centre,
  • PHP and Java application on the teacher's we
Plan

The organisations involved in the pilot operations have been:

 

  • Clio, responsible of the architecture (both the University and the business part),
  • University of Lecce, delivering lessons to test the pilot architecture.

 

The user groups involved in the pilot operations have been:

 

  • Business employees located in remote classrooms,
  • Academic remote students.

 

Clio has set-up and operated the transmitting site, the receiving sites and the required services.

 

At the remote classrooms of the University of Lecce, University teachers played the role of students will follow the lessons and interact with the "teaching" teacher.

Current status

FR has been successfully completed.

 

The pilot system has been successfully integrated.

 

Pilot operations started September 2003 and ended June 2004.

 

A press event has been organised to disseminate project results.

 

The platform has been thoroughly tested in all predictable an unpredictable working conditions.

 

The adequacy of the implementation of the service platform has been verified through the execution of a functional verification test session.

 

In addition, a comprehensive assessment of the system commercialisation strategy (described in the Strategic Plan document) has been provided consequently to the first perception and penetration of the market.

Documents

Prime Contractor