Towards MPEG-21-Based Cross-Layer Multimedia Content Adaptation

Cross-layer designs are becoming more and more attractive within the multimedia community since multiple-play services pave their way towards consumer markets enabling mobility in various aspects. However, cross-layer designs so far have mainly focused on performance issues and do not provide much support in terms of interoperability which is a requirement for services envisaged as part of the Fixed-Mobile Service Convergence (FMSC) initiative. This paper presents a first attempt towards increasing the interoperability of cross-layer designs by adopting an open standard - MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation - for describing the functional dependencies across network layers. In this paper a three-step approach for multimedia content adaptation is presented that introduces an MPEG-21-based cross- layer architecture.