Adaptive QoS management using layered multi-agent system for distributed multimedia applications

Owing to advances in terminal performance and network speed communication-intensive distributed multimedia applications have grown. Hence the development of end-to-end quality of service (QoS) management mechanisms is increasingly demanded for the applications. Since user's QoS requirements change and available resources for network and terminal fluctuate occasionally, adaptability is required for QoS management mechanisms. In this paper we propose a multi-agent-based, decentralized, adaptive QoS management framework that is suitable to a distributed multimedia environment. In this framework, the QoS management task is divided into subtasks, and the agents that take charge of the subtasks are designed. The adaptability is realized using collaborative QoS adaptation among the agents. A layered structure of multi-agent system is introduced to segregate long-term QoS adaptation from short-term QoS adaptation. Experimental and simulation results show the validity of layered QoS management using Application Agent (AA) and Stream Agent (SA).