NTNU

Department of Telematics 

Telematics research

Leif Arne Rønningen, PhD

professor - networked multimedia systems, system development

 

mail:         leifarne@item.ntnu.no
tel:           +47 7359 2665
mobil:     +47 9003 0473

Multimedia Lab: Caruso,    room A264/A268

Courses:

TTM4142 Networked Multimedia Systems

Experts in Team

EiT - Village

 

Supervision:

Project students, 3-8 each autumn

Master thesis students, 3-8 each spring

PhD students, 2-3 continuously

 

 

Background

Leif Arne Rønningen graduated as MSc in 1976 and PhD in 1982, from the Dep. of telematics, NTNU. He has more than 20 years of experience from research, development, project management, marketing, general- and top management and teaching. Positions held are as diving instructor, project manager, marketing-, research-, managing- and technical director, steering-board member, and chairman of the board. The research carried out is referenced below. From 1995-99 he was engaged by Telenor as a consultant, and was involved in the introduction of digital TV and specification work on future digital TV in Europe (DVB, DigiTAG and NorDig). In 1999 he was research director at Dep. of signal processing and system design, SINTEF. From January 2000 he is a professor at the Dep. of telematics, NTNU. He has participated in several start-ups of new companies.

See CV

Leif Arne Rønningen is a member of the opera company TrønderOperaen, one of the partners in Musikkteatret i Trondheim. He has been a board member and chairman of the board for several periods. Special responsibility has been experimentation and new technologies. He has bee responsible for applying video technology and arts as part of the design set of the opera ‘Thora paa Rimol’, staged at Melhus, Norway in 2002 and 2005, the chamber concert ‘Last Sails’ in Berkeley, California 2004, and ‘Spor’ in Olavshallen, Trondheim 2005. ‘Bilder’ (Pictures) was part of the scene design for the re-opening celebration seremoni of Vår Frue Kirke (church), sent in the national TV channel NRK in 2007. In 2008 he is engaged by the Norwegian Opera, Oslo, as a video scenographer for staging ‘Thora paa Rimol’ in the new opera house in November 2008.

Examples of acting in opera choir: Bajazzo by Leoncavallo, Carmina Burana by Orff, Orpheus in the underworld by Offenbach, Thora paa Rimol by Borgstrøm, Rigoletto by Verdi (cooperation between TrønderOperaen and DNO, Olavshallen), The magic flute, Motzart, and Cavalleria Rusticana. Examples of acting in TrønderOperaen soloist groups: baritone parts from Cosi fan tutte, The magic fluite and other Mozart operas. Participation in classical church concerts and church music plays in the Nidaros Cathedral over many years as member of the cathedral choirs. CD recordings with opera choir: Heimferd by Irgens-Jenssen, and Thora fra Rimol by Borgstrøm. Participation in several radio and TV productions. He is presently a member and board member of Trondheim Vocal Ensemble.

From 2003-2006 he was a board member of TEKS, Trondheim Elektroniske KunstSenter (center of electronic arts). He is also been a board member of the company VisualKnowledge, and is presently a board member of Stiftelsen Thora and the company CUPP Computing, and a member of the Research Committee at the IME faculty, NTNU.

 

 

Present research areas:

·       Distributed Multimedia Plays (DMP)

·       Quality Shaping - Adaptive Scene Resolution & Traffic Control in IP nets

·       Object oriented scenes & services

·       Autostereo multiview video, segmentation, fovation, presentation, object tracking.

·       Embedded system design

·       Application of DMP in arts (opera, musical plays, dance, concerts, etc)

 

The main features of DMP can be summarized as follows:

'The Distributed Multimedia Plays Systems Architecture (DMP) provides 3D multiview video and 3D sound collaboration between performers over packet networks. To guarantee the end-to-end time delay less than 10-20 milliseconds, and obtain high network resource utilization, the perceived quality of audio-visual content is allowed to vary with the traffic in the network. Parameters that are included in the quality concept, and that can be controlled adaptively, are the end-to-end delay, the number of 3D scene sub-objects and their temporal and spatial resolution, adaptive and scalable compression of sub-scenes, and the number of views. To approach the natural level of human perception, the quality has to be increased to levels that temporarily require data rates of Giga bits per second between users. An integrated resolution and traffic control algorithm denoted the Quality Shaping algorithm, using traffic classes, measurement and forecasting of traffic, feedback control and traffic shaping (packet drop and source scaling), provides the necessary control. Actual DMP applications from arts are jazz sessions, song lessons, and distributed opera. Other applications are in coming generations TV (MHP extended with DMP), games, education, and near natural-seeing virtual meetings.'.

 

Presentations:

A large number of presentations (> 300) has been carried out (conferences, scientific periodicals, newspapers, radio, TV, marketing).

 

Publications:

More than 100 scientific papers and reports. Several works have combined psychological, sociological, pedagogical and technical approach.

A large number of development-, economic-, marketing- and management reports and plans.

Papers, talks, technical reports, arts designs and interviews from 2000 up to now.

Some selected publications before 2000:

'Analyses of a traffic shaping scheme'. Paper presented at the 10th International Teletraffic Congress, Montreal 1983 (from Dr.ing. thesis). The paper presents a new network access flow control scheme called 'traffic shaping' (later generally adopted as a basic concept, e.g. in ATM networks).

'Fjernundervisning - et realistisk alternativ?' Article by LAR in the book 'Det data-assisterte samfunn', Norsk voksenpedagogisk institutt 1988 (red. W Rønning, R Ingvaldsen), and 'Teknologisk grunnlag for fremtidens fjernundervisning'. Paper presented by LAR at the conference 'Det data-assisterte samfunn', Trondheim 1989. Part of the proceedings 'Teknologi og tilpasning' Norsk voksenpedagogisk institutt 1989 (red. W Rønning, R Ingvaldsen). Distant interactive learning using a combination of terrestrial communication networks and MAC satellite TV was introduced (this was before the term 'multimedia' and the Web were invented). Pedagogical models for distant, interactive learning were presented.

'Development and marketing of integrated circuits for MAC TV'. Nordic VLSI 11oct1989, and 'A multi Conditional Access MAC Receiver Architecture'. Nordic VLSI, June1989. Architecture and HW/SW co-design of a MAC TV decoder and chipset. Specification of access control system for pay-TV, Eurocrypt S

'Architecture of a Very Fast Packet Switch'. Paper presented at the XI International Switching Symposium, Florence (Italy) 7-11 May 1984, and 'Høyhastighets pakkesvitsjede datanett'. Elab report STF44 F86072. May 1986. System-on-chip, HW/SW co-design. Architecture of a high-performance packet switch (> 50 Mbps per link) and VLSI circuits. Adaptation of 'window' protocols for high data rates.

'Custom integrated circuits for GSM mobile stations'. Nordic VLSI 3jan91. Based on the GSM specifications, architectures for two generations ASICs for the mobile unit were proposed. SW/HW Co-design was carried out.

'The Combined Digital Satellite Broadcast and Internet System'. Telenor Satellite Services, 7feb99. A network architecture combining satellite broadcasting and Internet, in order to support DVB 'Enhanced broadcast', 'interactive TV' and 'Internet access' was proposed and analyzed. The concepts of 'layer-structured multimedia applications' and 'distributed multimedia plays' were introduced. Adaptive algorithms and architectures for adaptive use of caches and carousels for Web and TV objects were described.

'Optimization of Multimedia Home Network Architecture'. Telenor Satellite Services, 28feb99. About iterated design methodology, generalized object oriented processing structures, home network architectures, unified user interface/service control, how to speed up Java, HDTV MPEG-2 Picture-in-Picture decoder, hardware/Java co-design of protocols, security strategy, personal mobile IPv6 addressing in satellite networks.