Ramakrishna Vedantham

Background

I am a Member of Research Staff in the Visual Computing and User Interfaces (VCUI) research team at Nokia Research Center (NRC) Palo Alto. I have been with NRC since January 2004 and participated in the research and standardization activities related to multimedia codecs and transport protocols. I am a Nokia delegate in 3GPP SA4 work group where I contribute to the technical specification of Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS), Packet-switched Streaming Service (PSS) and Dynamic and Interactive Multimedia Scenes (DIMS). I was also a Nokia delegate in the 3GPP2 TSG-C1.2 work group where I contributed towards the technical specifications of Broadcast Multicast Services (BCMCS) and Packet-switched Video Telephony (PSVT).

Prior to that I was a PhD student in the Dept of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. I received an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas in December 2000, and a BTech in Electronics and Communications Enginnering from the National Institute of Technology Calicut (formerly Calicut Regional Engineering College) in 1996.

Research Interests

I have a broad range of research interests involving end-to-end design of mobile multimedia communication systems and services. I am excited by the plethora of mobile internet based services made possible by the explosive growth in the use of mobie computers (smart phones) that have multimodal connectivity with smart environments, that have high speed ubiquitous network access, and that have powerful multimedia processing capabilities.

My recent focus is on mobile augmented reality applications, computational photography and other computer vision based applications of cameraphones. My prior research interests were in the general area of reliable multimedia transport and in particular error-resilient video coding, joint source-channel coding, advanced forward error correction coding (FEC) technologies and cross-layer optimization techniques for mobile multimedia communication.

Professional Activities

• Nokia delegate in 3GPP SA4 and 3GPP2 TSG-C1.2 standards meetings
• Editor of 3GPP2 Technical Specification on BCMCS Codecs and Protocols
• IEEE Member, ACM Member
• Reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, PV 2007, VIE 2006, MUM 2006, PIMRC 2006, ICIP 2004 and GlobeCom 2003

Publications

• R. Vedantham, I. Curcio, "Interactive Mobile TV Technologies - An Overview", Book chapter in "Broadband Nobile Multimedia - Techniques and applications", CRC Press, To appear in 1Q 2008.
• R. Vedantham, I. Curcio, "Broadcasting Multimedia Transport: 3G and Future Mobile Networks ", Book chapter in "Encyclopedia of Wireless and Mobile Communications", CRC Press, To appear in 3Q 2007.
• V. Setlur, T. Capin, S. Chitturi, R. Vedantham, M. Ingrassia, "MORE: Mobile Open Rich-media Environment", IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME), Toronto, Canada, July 2006
• V. Suryavanshi, A. Nosratinia, R. Vedantham, "Resilient Packet Header Compression Through Coding", IEEE Global Communication Conference, Dallas, TX, November 2004
• R. Vedantham, A. Nosratinia, "Video Error Resilience through Efficient Shadowing of Decoder", 41^st Annual Allerton Conference on Communications Control and Computing, Monticello, IL, October 2003
• Co-author of several technical contributions to 3GPP SA4 and 3GPP2 TSG-C1.2 meetings in the areas of mobile multimedia broadcast/multicast, rich media transport, and interactive multimedia sharing applications
• Co-author of one granted patent and several pending patent applications in the areas of reliable multimedia delivery over mobile broadcast/multicast networks, rich media transport, and interactive multimedia sharing applications

Awards & Honors

• TxTEC Scholarship, Texas Telecommunications Engineering Consortium, 08/2002-05/2003
• ECS Special Fellowship, University of Texas at Dallas, 08/2000-05/2002