Analysis of MPEG-4 scalable encoded video

Streaming video is expected to account for a considerable percentage of traffic on both wired and wireless networks, and is expected to be encoded in a scalable fashion and have a heterogeneous quality. The author discusses a key standard that has introduced such improvements, namely MPEG-4, and outlines a statistical study of predominantly single layer (non-scalable) and temporal/spatial (scalable) MPEG-4 encoded video of differing quality. The results are reported by illustrating the scaling behaviour of such traffic and conclusions are drawn concerning the potential impact on future telecommunication networks.