A study of the MPEG video coder for use over ATM networks

With the advent of high speed communication networks interconnected with high bandwidth optical fiber, a variety of new services will be available to the common user. One of these services will undoubtedly be video communications. ,Whether it is yideotelephonY't/videoconferencing or simply broadcast video, the demand is here to display video on the desktop. As the TCrTI (International v Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee) has set as a standard for Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (BISDN) applicatipns a network topology known as "Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and recently a video coding standard known as MPEG, it won't be long before there art} a plethora of networked video applications based upon these new standards. '" One of. the major drawbacks of sending compressed video information over the packet switched networks of tomorrow is the loss of packetized information. The effects of these losses up_on the output visual quality will depend both on the network and the coding scheme. The traffic :patterns of an MPEG codec for various input parameters need to be determined. By altering the coding scheme, we can change the outpl!t bit rate at the s"acrifice of visual quality. The effects upon visual quality of lost packets as well as packets of differing priorities in our network will be determined as l 1 well as the peak signal to noise ratio between the compressed and reQ?nstructed frames. " . This study is Qrganized as follows. Chapter One gives a short introduction to Asynchronous Transfer Mode Networks, their advantages and disadvantages and concef!1s. Chapter Two introduces the new MPEG video coding standard. Chapter Three goes into the details of the computer simulations and methods used to model the MPEG traffic streams and the associated network information loss. Chapter Four discus~es the experimental result~ and Chapter Fiv~ presents conclusions and suggestions for further study.