A Distributed Audio Personalization Framework over Android

e -Journal of Science & Technology (e-JST)
e-Περιοδικό Επιστήμης & Τεχνολογίας
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57
A Distributed Audio Personalization Framework over Android
Emmanouil Skondras1
, Vasileios Triantafyllou2
Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business
10434 Athens, Greece
e-mail: manolisskondras@yahoo.gr1
, btriantafgr@hotmail.com2
ABSTRACT
This paper presents an audio personalization framework for mobile devices. The multimedia
models MPEG-21 and MPEG-7 are used to describe metadata information. The metadata
which support personalization are stored into each device. The Web Ontology Language
(OWL) language is used to produce and manipulate the relative ontological descriptions. The
process is distributed according to the MapReduce framework and implemented over the
Android platform. It determines a hierarchical system structure consisted of Master and
Worker devices. The Master retrieves a list of audio tracks matching specific criteria using
SPARQL queries.
Key words: Android, MapReduce, MPEG-7, MPEG-21, OWL, SPARQL, Persona-
lization, Distributed architectures
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the volume of multimedia data is increasing rapidly. Also network
infrastructures enable information repositories to be accessed from a large variety of
devices. The delivery of multimedia services is a common task. However more users
tend to require information retrieval services which include high quality features such
as semantic description and personalization of information. In this paper a prototype
application that uses SPARQL queries to deliver audio information to mobile users is
described.
The personalization process is distributed according to the MapReduce framework
and implemented over the Android mobile platform. It determines a hierarchical
system structure consisted of Master and Worker devices. The Master interacts with
the Workers and retrieves a list of audio tracks matching specific criteria using
SPARQL queries. The MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 models are used for the description of
audio content. The metadata information is managed using the appropriate Web
Ontology Language (OWL) ontology. Each Worker contains audio resources and
resource adaptation metadata, minimizing thus the central storage requirements. Each
device can implement the master-side as well as the worker-side.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. First the related research
literature as well as an overview of the standards followed in this study are presented.
Then the software architecture that supports the prototype application and the relative
software elements and modules are described. A case study of our work is also
presented. Finally, the proposed framework is concluded and possible future
extensions and plans are referred.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Related Work
The rapid increase in multimedia content has challenged the academic and industrial
communities into the development of multimedia tools enhanced with personalization

e-Journal of Science & Technology (e-JST)
(2), 6, 2011 58
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and adaptation capabilities. Mobile devices (such as mobile phones, smart phones and
PDAs) have become increasingly powerful. Also distributed approaches provide
flexibility and parallelization in the personalization process. Consequently, some
related works are presented.
In the work described in [1], the authors propose a personalization process that
customizes rich multimedia documents to the needs of an individual reader.
Multimedia documents, such as textbooks, reference materials and leisure materials,
inherently use techniques that make them accessible for people with disabilities, who
are incapable of using printed materials. The authors address issues of establishing
user personalization profiles, as well as adapting and customizing content, interaction
and navigation. Customization of interaction and navigation leads to different user
interfaces, as well as different structural content presentation. Customization of
content includes insertion of a summary, synchronization of sign language video with
highlighting of text, self-voicing capability, alternative support for screen readers, or
reorganization of layout to accommodate large fonts.
The work described in [2] presents the implementation of a personalized learning
model in distributed learning environments based on Semantic Web technologies. The
authors propose a service based architecture for establishing personalized e-Learning
process. The functionality is provided by various web-services. A Personal Learning
Assistant integrates personalization services and other supplementary services and
provides personalized access to learning resources in an e-Learning network.
The work described in [3] examines a metadata based approach, supporting the
personalization process for knowledge workers who interact with distributed
information objects. An architecture supporting the personalization process is
described, along with a prototype personalization environment. Its metadata are
decentralized, in terms that the information is stored locally on each client. The
authors discuss the advantages, as well as the challenges of the suggested approach.
Finally, [4] presents how the interest of a user in TV programs can be predicted
from his zapping behavior. It also presents how a user’s social network can be used to
realize a distributed recommendation of TV programs. A user interface for a
personalized peer to peer television system that encompasses personalized navigation
to available distributed content is demonstrated.
Materials
This section makes an overview of the standards and the technologies used for the
development of the application prototype. These standards include MPEG-7 [5],
MPEG-21 [6], OWL [7], MapReduce [8] and SPARQL [9]. Also, the proposed
framework is implemented over the Android [10] platform.
MPEG-7 is a standard developed from Moving Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) for
the description of multimedia information. The standard provides a framework for the
description of multimedia content encoded in any existing scheme such as MPEG1,
MPEG2, and MPEG4. Metadata are stored in XML allowing efficient indexing,
searching and filtering of multimedia data. MPEG-7 defines the following elements:
 Description tools, which include Descriptors (D) and Description Schemes (DS).
Descriptors define the syntax and the semantics of metadata elements. Description
Schemes contain Descriptions, other Description Schemes as well as relationships
between them.
 A Description Definition Language (DDL), which is used for defining the syntax of
Description Tools and creating new or extending existing Description Schemes.

59
 System tools which provide mechanisms for multiplexing descriptors and
synchronizing descriptions with content.
defining an open framework for multimedia applications
The MPEG-21 standard defines a framework for effectively managing multimedia
resources. MPEG-21 uses the architectural concept of the Digital Item. A Digital Item
is a combination of resources (such as videos, audio tracks, images), metadata (such
as descriptors, identifiers), and structures describing the relationships between
resources. Digital Items are declared using the Digital Item Declaration Language
(DIDL). MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation (DIA) architecture and the MPEG-7
Multimedia Description Schemes (MDS) for content and service personalization
provide a Usage Environment which models user preferences. The Usage
Environment Description of the DIA framework contains the following attributes:
The User Characteristics, which specify user features, including:
-The User Info, where user information is stored.
-The User Preferences, describing the user browsing, filtering and search
preferences.
-The Usage History, where the history of user interaction with digital items is
presented.
-The Presentation Preferences, which describe user preferences concerning the
means of presentation of multimedia information.
-The Accessibility Characteristics, responsible for content adaptation concerning
users with auditory or visual impairments.
The Terminal Capabilities, which describe the technical characteristics of user
devices.
The Natural Environment Characteristics, providing information about the
location and time of a user in a particular environment, as well as audio-visual
characteristics which may include noise levels and illumination properties of the
natural environment.
The Network Characteristics, which specify the network characteristics
parameters including bandwidth utilization, packet delay and packet loss.
The RDF Schema (RDFS) [11] provides structures for knowledge representation. It
deals with the organization of ontological hierarchies such as classes, relationships
and properties. However complex structures or restrictions such as the scope of
properties or the cardinality of attributes cannot be supported in RDFS. The need of a
more powerful ontology language leads us to the Web Ontology Language (OWL).
OWL is a family of knowledge representation languages used for composing
ontologies. It is considered as an extension of the RDFS and its specifications have
been authorized by the World Wide Web Consortium. Ontologies are described in owl
documents by defining classes, properties and individuals. Classes are collection of
concepts, attributes are properties of classes and individuals represent the objects of a
particular class. Three OWL sublanguages are defined (OWL Lite, OWL DL and
OWL Full). OWL Lite defines class hierarchies with simple constraints. For example,
it allows only 0 and 1 cardinality values. OWL Lite has lower complexity than OWL
DL. OWL DL and OWL Full use the same language vocabulary. However OWL Full
does not impose any syntactic restrictions. It does not require separation of classes,
properties and individuals and allows RDF structures to be mixed with OWL syntax.
As a result an RDF document is a valid OWL Full document while it is not a valid
OWL Lite or DL document.

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SPARQL is an SQL-like language developed for issuing queries to RDF and OWL
repositories. Queries are expressed in triple patterns similar to RDF whereas RDF
subjects, predicates and objects could be variables. Additional language features
include conjunctive or disjunctive patterns as well as value filters. SPARQL
components are described in three specifications. The query language specification
[12] presents the SPARQL language structures. The query results XML specification
[13], defines the format of the results returned from SPARQL queries as XML
documents. The SARQL protocol [14] defines the framework for sending queries
from clients to remote server using HTTP or SOAP messages.
MapReduce is a framework for producing and executing parallelized software. It
has a lot of applications in a large variety of issues which require distributed
computations. It consisted of a “Map” and a “Reduce” function. The “Map” function
solves a part of the problem. Then, the “Reduce” function merges the individual
results and extracts the entire result. Finally, Android is a Linux based mobile
platform, which is used as operating system for cellphones, netbooks and tablets.
Methods
This section presents system’s architecture which is distributed in respect to the
MapReduce framework. Audio metadata as well as the OWL ontology are created and
stored locally at each device. This distribution of computational load and
personalization data improves framework’s scalability.
Each device contains its audio tracks and the respective metadata using MPEG-7 in
an MPEG-21 structure. The audio tracks are separated in sixteen music categories
(such as pop, classical, dance, electronic etc.). Audio metadata include user defined
metadata (such as artist, producer, production year and category) and technical
oriented metadata (such as bitrate, sample rate, track duration, audio channels, audio
format and file size). Also usage history metadata (track’s popularity in respect to all
tracks and track’s popularity in its category and recommended similar tracks) are
contained. Table 1 presents a sample of the audio metadata structure.
Table 1. Sample of the audio metadata structure
<mpeg21:DIDL xmlns:mpeg21="urn:mpeg:mpeg21:2002:02-mpeg21-NS" xmlns:mpeg7="http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG7/2000">
<mpeg21:Container>
<mpeg21:Item>
<mpeg21:Descriptor>
<mpeg21:Statement mpeg7:mimeType="text/plain">Metadata about audio track.</mpeg21:Statement>
</mpeg21:Descriptor>
<mpeg21:Component>
<mpeg21:Resource mpeg7:mimeType="application/xml">
<mpeg7:Mpeg7>
<mpeg7:CreationPreferences>
<mpeg7:Title mpeg7:preferenceValue="47" xml:lang=“en”>SoloGuitar.mp3</mpeg7:Title>
</mpeg7:CreationPreferences>
<mpeg7:CreationInformation>
<mpeg7:Creation>
<mpeg7:Creator>
<mpeg7:Role
mpeg7:href=“urn:mpeg:mpeg7:cs:RoleCS:2001:AUTHOR” />
<mpeg7:Agent xsi:type=“PersonType”>
<mpeg7:Name>
<mpeg7:GivenName>Nick</mpeg7:GivenName>
<mpeg7:FamilyName>Smith</mpeg7:FamilyName>
</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:Agent>
</mpeg7:Creator>
<mpeg7:Creator>
<mpeg7:Role
mpeg7:href=“urn:mpeg:mpeg7:cs:RoleCS:2001:Publisher"/>
<mpeg7:Agent xsi:type=“PersonType”>
<mpeg7:Name>
<mpeg7:GivenName>John</mpeg7:GivenName>
<mpeg7:FamilyName>Smith</mpeg7:FamilyName>
</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:Agent>
</mpeg7:Creator>
<mpeg7:Abstract>

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<mpeg7:FreeTextAnnotation>Excellent !!!
</mpeg7:FreeTextAnnotation>
<mpeg7:StructuredAnnotation>
<mpeg7:What><mpeg7:Name>Music Track</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:What>
</mpeg7:StructuredAnnotation>
</mpeg7:Abstract>
<mpeg7:CreationCoordinates>
<mpeg7:CreationDate>
<mpeg7:TimePoint>2010-05-11</mpeg7:TimePoint>
<mpeg7:Duration>P7D</mpeg7:Duration>
</mpeg7:CreationDate>
</mpeg7:CreationCoordinates>
</mpeg7:Creation>
</mpeg7:CreationInformation>
<mpeg7:ClassificationPreferences>
<mpeg7:Genre mpeg7:preferenceValue="75"
mpeg7:href=“urn:mpeg:ContentCS:1”>
<mpeg7:Name xml:lang=“en”>Rock</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:Genre>
</mpeg7:ClassificationPreferences>
<mpeg7:MediaLocator>
<mpeg7:MediaUri>data/tracks/ SoloGuitar.mp3</mpeg7:MediaUri>
</mpeg7:MediaLocator>
<mpeg7:MediaTime>
<mpeg7:MediaTimePoint>T00:00:00F100</mpeg7:MediaTimePoint>
<mpeg7:MediaDuration>T00:13:07F100</mpeg7:MediaDuration>
</mpeg7:MediaTime>
<mpeg7:MediaFormat>
<mpeg7:Content mpeg7:href="urn:mpeg:mpeg7:cs:ContentCS:2001:2">
<mpeg7:Name xml:lang="en">audio</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:Content>
<mpeg7:Medium
mpeg7:href="urn:mpeg:mpeg7:cs:MediumCS:2001:2.1.1 ">
<mpeg7:Name xml:lang="en">HD</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:Medium>
<mpeg7:FileFormat
mpeg7:href="urn:mpeg:mpeg7:cs:FileFormatCS:2001:3">
<mpeg7:Name xml:lang="en">MP3</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:FileFormat>
<mpeg7:FileSize>787082</mpeg7:FileSize>
<mpeg7:BitRate mpeg7:minimum="N/A" mpeg7:average="8000"
mpeg7:maximum="N/A"></mpeg7:BitRate>
<mpeg7:AudioCoding>
<mpeg7:Format
mpeg7:href="urn:mpeg:mpeg7:cs:AudioCodingFormatCS:2001:1">
<mpeg7:Name xml:lang="en">MP3</mpeg7:Name>
</mpeg7:Format>
<mpeg7:AudioChannels mpeg7:track="2"></mpeg7:AudioChannels>
<mpeg7:Sample mpeg7:rate="22050" mpeg7:bitPer="0">
</mpeg7:Sample>
</mpeg7:AudioCoding>
</mpeg7:MediaFormat>
</mpeg7:Mpeg7>
</mpeg21:Resource>
</mpeg21:Component>
</mpeg21:Item>
</mpeg21:Container>
</mpeg21:DIDL>
A suitable OWL ontology for metadata manipulation has been created (Figure 1)
and stored in each device. It describes the structure and the semantics of the audio
metadata providing thus flexibility to the proposed framework.
Figure 1. The OWL ontology about audio metadata

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When a device requests a specific list of audio tracks using a SPARQL query, it
becomes the Master and the other devices become the Workers. Each Worker receives
the request, executes the Map function and extracts its relative local audio list. Then
the Master receives the individual Workers’ audio lists, executes the Reduce function
and extracts the entire audio list. Figure 2 presents the distribution of our system.
Figure 2. System’s distribution
Table 2 presents the MapReduce functions’ models. Map’s arguments are the
Master’s SPARQL query and the Worker’s audio metadata. Additionally it returns the
relative Worker’s audio list. On the other hand, Reduce’s arguments are the number of
the Workers and the relative audio lists. Consequently it returns the entire audio list
according to the SPARQL query.
Table 2. The MapReduce functions
workerAudioList[] Map( SPARQLquery, localAudioMetadata)
Map(k1, v1) → list(k2, v2)
k1 = SPARQLquery
v1 = localAudioMetadata
k2 = workerIdentifier[]
v2 = workerTop10[]
entireAudioList[] Reduce(numberOfWorkers, workersTop10s[])
Reduce(k2, list(v2)) → list(v3)
k2 = numberOfWorkers[]
list(v2) = workersTop10s[]
list(v3) = summarizedTop10[]
Figure 3 illustrates the design of Map function. The Master can also listen to an
audio track that contained in a Worker. It results to an update of the Worker’s usage
history metadata about the relative audio track. System’s modules are developed using
the Java Android API [15].
Figure 3. The Map function

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RESULT AND DISCUSSION
In this section an example of framework’s functionality is presented. Three Android
virtual devices are emulated. One emulator instance runs as Master and the other two
as Workers. The Master composes a SPARQL query and sends the relative request.
Table 3 presents an example SPARQL query. It retrieves a catalog consisted of the
audio files contained to the Workers according to the arguments of the “FILTER”
statement, in respect of the methods presented in the previous section. The results are
ordered in descending sequence according to their popularity.
Table 3. An example SPARQL query
PREFIX mpeg7: < http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG7/2000>
SELECT ?Title
WHERE { ?x mpeg7:title ?title .
FILTER (?Genre=Pop || ?Genre=Rock
&& ?Publisher=PublisherName
&& ?CreationDate>=2004-01-01
&& ?MediaDuration>30
&& ?Format=MP3 || ?Format=WAV
&& ?FileSize<20000
&& ?BitRate>=44000)
}ORDER BY DESC(?preferenceValue)
Each Worker receives the Master’s request, runs the Map function and returns its
relative local audio top-10. The metadata blocks that contribute in this step are
presented in Figure 4.
Figure 4. The relative metadata blocks
Figure 5. SPARQL query execution and entire top-10 extraction
Consequently, the Master receives the Workers’ top-10s, runs the Reduce function
and extracts the entire top-10. Master’s user interface appears a list with the entire

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top-10 as well as the appropriate components for requesting and listening to audio
files. Then the user selects an audio track from the entire top-10 and retrieves it from
the relative Worker. Figure 5 presents a SPARQL execution example as well as the
relative top-10’s extraction.
CONCLUSION
The proposed framework is implemented over the Android platform. It relies on
MPEG-21 and MPEG-7 standards to achieve personalization. MPEG-21 DIDL and
DIA are used handling Digital Items declaration and user preferences, respectively.
Moreover, the appropriate OWL ontology is used for managing the metadata.
MapReduce is applied, enhancing the distributed architecture. Each device organizes
its own metadata locally, decreasing thus the network’s load.
Future work contains the implementation of an energy aware protocol for query
routing. Also the proposed framework will be extended with the MPEG Query Format
(MPQF), enabling the capability of more advanced queries’ execution.
References
[1] H.L. Petrie, G. Weber, W. Fisher, “Personalization, interaction, and navigation in
rich multimedia documents for print-disabled users”, IBM Systems Journal, Vol 44,
No 3, pp. 629-635, IBM, 2005
[2] Peter Dolog, Nicola Henze, Wolfgang Nejdl, Michael Sintek, “Personalization in
Distributed eLearning Environments”, Thirteen International World Wide Web
Conference, pp.170-179, ACM Press, New York, 2004
[3] David L. Hicks, Klaus Tochtermann, “Personalizing Information Spaces: A
Metadata Based Approach”, International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata
Applications, pp.213-220, Tokyo, Japan, October 24-26, 2001
[4] Jun Wang, Johan Pouwelse, Jenneke Fokker, Arjen P. de Vries and Marcel J. T.
Reinders, “Personalization on a peer-to-peer television system”, Special Issue on
Personalized and Mobile Digital TV Applications, Vol. 36, Num. 1-2, pp.89-113,
Springer, January, 2008
[5] MPEG-7, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 Coding of Moving Pictures and Audio,
http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-7/mpeg-7.htm
[6] MPEG-21, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 Coding of Moving Pictures and Audio,
http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-21/mpeg-21.htm
[7] Web Ontology Language, World Wide Web Consortium, http://
www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/
[8] Jeffrey Dean, Sanjay Chemawat, “MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on
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[9] Jun Zhai, Kaitao Zhou, “Semantic Retrieval for Sports Information Based on
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[10] Android, http://www.android.com/
[11] RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema, W3C
Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/
[12] SPARQL Query Language for RDF, W3C Recommendation, 15 January 2008,
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[13] SPARQL Query Results XML Format, W3C Recommendation, 15 January 2008,
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[14] SPARQL Protocol for RDF, W3C Working Draft, 14 January 2005,
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[15] Java Android API: http://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html

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