Audio Symbiosis

Mobile devices offer a private audio channel. A user can view a video shown on a public display such as a train and listen to the corresponding audio on his headset attached to his headphone. This division of media ensures that passengers who are not interested in the program do not have to put up with the sound.

The audio quality of personal headsets is generally acceptable for large sections of the population. However, large speakers in varying spatial configurations are able to deliver a broader range of experiences. For example, audio from a mobile device can be listened to on a high fidelity audio system.

We believe that the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can play an important role in audio symbiosis. An interesting feature of SIP is the ability to separate the control and media portions of a connection. In fact, they may take place at different devices. Thus SIP allows a level of indirection and late binding of the media device. This is a powerful concept and has the potential to do for communications what pointers did for programming by separating data from addresses and virtual memory did for large programs by creating virtual addresses to overcome limits of real addresses.

More details on audio symbiosis are available from our experience with SIP and following publications

Unleashing the power of wearable devices in a SIP infrastructure, Arup Acharya, Stefan Berger, Chandra Narayanaswami, Proc of IEEE PerCom 2005, pp. 159-168. Extended version invited for publication in Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal.

Page was last updated in May, 2005.