Design and Implementation of Synchronization of WPAN Devices for Multimedia Playback
Xuyang Tian · Research Repository (Delft University of Technology) · 2010
With the development of projector technology, portable projectors called pico-projectors are emerging on the market. To achieve a high quality projection, multiple pico-projectors can be used to display the same video, where accurate synchronization is required. The target of this thesis is to design and implement a Linux-based application which can synchronize multimedia playback over a WPAN with high accuracy. By analyzing the synchronization requirements, the synchronization problem is decomposed into playback synchronization and clock synchronization. To achieve a synchronized playback based on synchronized clocks, we explore several open source projects and eventually build a synchronized player which can play video with frame-by-frame level synchronization. For clock synchronization, the principles of a typical computer clock and the most popular time synchronization – NTP are studied. Based on that, a new time synchronization protocol with quick-start and anti-interference properties is designed. We also conduct a survey to test if the application meets the users’ requirement of synchronized playback. The final results show that our application provides a synchronized playback with the accuracy which is acceptable for most users.