Video quality of service in broadband networks

The emerging standards for integrated broadband networks will change the communications infrastructure. Broadband asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks will enable a range of new communications applications. These applications will include multimedia communications, digital video broadcasting, interactive video and video on demand services. Multimedia communications and in particular digital video communications have challenging transmission requirements, such as high bandwidth and low delay. An important issue which must be addressed is that of quality of service (QOS) requirements for video and multimedia applications over broadband networks. Within an ATM network, QOS is negotiated for each connection. Typical QOS parameters include mean and peak bit rate requirements, delay tolerance and error tolerance. With the gradual introduction of broadband networks, the available network QOS may vary from connection to connection. The authors examine the QOS requirements for digital video transmission and the implications of these requirements for the design of broadband networks and video coding and transmission systems