A synchronization mechanism among various media including teleoperation in multimedia communications

In this paper, the authors propose a media synchronization mechanism which synchronizes the output timing among multiple continuous media streams in multimedia communications. They deal with real-time inputted media streams such as those used in TV telephony and conferencing. This mechanism includes intra-stream synchronization, which manages the media stream reconstruction and variable end-to-end delay compensation, and inter-stream synchronization which adjusts the output timing among media streams. Though the continuous media are generally regarded as audio and image streams, one may also regard the control signals of teleoperation as continuous media. This mechanism synchronizes audio, image streams and control signals. The authors constitute this mechanism and investigate its performance through computer simulations