End-to-end modeling and simulation of MPEG-2 transport streams over ATM networks with jitter

In this paper, the operation of MPEG-2 systems is modeled and simulated when an MPEG-2 transport stream is delivered through an ATM network with jitter. End-to-end packet-based analysis is performed for delivery of MPEG-2 transport streams over ATM networks. A novel approach to analyzing the decoder buffer behavior in the presence of network jitter is presented. The probability density function of the interarrival time of the ATM adaptation layer 5 (AAL5) protocol data unit (PDU) is derived from an MPEG-2 video source model and an ATM network jitter model. Based on a real-time decoding requirement of the MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) system target decoder (T-STD), the decoder buffer behavior is simulated. In this simulation, the packets’ arrivals follow the derived probability density function of the AAL5 PDU interarrival time. The modeling and simulation results show the interactions among packet loss ratio, decoder buffer size, and network jitter level. We found that jitter affects decoder buffer size and packet loss ratio in a significant way.