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Abstract: Dynamic adaptation of multimedia content is seen as an important feature of next generation networks and pervasive systems enabling terminals and applications to adapt to changes in e.g. context, access network, and available quality-of-Service (QoS) due to mobility of users, devices or sessions. We present the architecture of a multimedia stream adaptation service which enables communication between terminals having heterogeneous hardware and software capabilities and served by heterogeneous networks. The service runs on special content adaptation nodes which can be placed at any location within the network. The flexible structure of our architecture allows using a variety of different adaptation engines. A generic transcoding engine is used to change the codec of streams. An MPEG-21 Digital Item Adaptation (DIA) based transformation engine allows adjusting the data rate of scalable media streams. An intelligent decision-taking engine implements adaptive flow control which takes into account current network QoS parameters and congestion information. Measurements demonstrate the quality gains achieved through adaptive congestion control mechanisms under conditions typical for a heterogeneous network.

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