Frame spreading and a modified priority scheme for VBR MPEG video transmission in ATM networks

This paper presents the study of an efficient transmission mechanism, using frame spreading, for variable bit rate MPEG video sources, through an ATM multiplex such as a cable head-end. A priority scheme is implemented in a software MPEG encoder, that produces similar traffic in both partitions, (i.e., the high and low priority partitions) for all three frame types, (intra, predicted and interpolated) used in MPEG. An ATM multiplexer with pushout buffer mechanism is implemented for this study, in order to provide priority scheduling in the multiplexer. The multiplexer is fed with similar VBR MPEG sources and performance statistics such as cell loss ratios are studied for various frame spreading scenarios