Transmission of multi-layered MPEG-4 video over ATM/ABR networks

Large-scale deployment of multimedia video applications is still being hindered by a major obstacle, which is the quality versus utilization efficiency trade-off. Currently, to accommodate the bursty nature of video traffic, good quality video is guaranteed by reserving more resources than actually required. This leads to a high cost for the end user. On the other hand, if less resources are reserved to achieve a higher resource utilization efficiency and lower cost for the end user, the result may be degradation of the quality of the transmitted video. The transmission of MPEG-4 video over Available Bit Rate (ABR) service provides an opportunity to solve the above noted problem through the interaction between the application and the network where both the application and the network can dynamically re-negotiate the required bandwidth.; The research presented in this thesis proposes a novel application and network-aware source architecture that is capable of bridging the gap between MPEG-4 application requirements and ATM/ABR network offerings. The proposed architecture combines: resource reservation and adaptation techniques, traffic shaping and rate shaping mechanisms, congestion control and congestion recovery mechanisms, and finally combines network and application awareness. A set of source algorithms are designed and presented in this research including: an Intelligent VOP Dropping algorithm (IVDA) which controls the transmission of enhanced layer Video Object Plans (VOPs), Quality Level Selection algorithm (QLSA), and a Rate Request Algorithm (RRA). The adaptive nature of the source architecture and algorithms alleviate the need for accurate traffic descriptors of the video traffic, which is a major problem when video is transmitted over resource reservation services such as Variable Bit Rate (VBR) service.; The proposed architecture and algorithms have been evaluated under various network conditions using an ATM/ABR network simulator and various video traces with different characteristics encoded into two layers according to the MPEG-4 standard.