The multimedia desktop conferencing system provides an environment for the distributed participants, seated at their desks, to hold real-time conferences by interchanging information through voice, video, and multimedia documents.
In this thesis, an improved architecture of multimedia desktop conferencing system for small-scale groups is proposed. We have developed a multimedia desktop conferencing system supporting the group work on LAN. Also, we have designed and implemented the data transmission protocols among system components.
The characteristics of our system are as follows. The system supports multiple conferences with the real-time media like voice and video. The system provides a shared workspace as the multimedia authoring tool which supports the creation of multimedia document. Also, the system transmits the media data in consideration of the current network traffic, the transmission characteristics and the priority of the media. To reduce the amount of transmitted data, the data merging and compression techniques are used.
It is expected to support CSCW(Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) such as collaborative software development, cooperative document editing, group decision, teleshopping, remote diagnosis, and remote education.
