Packet Video Communications over ATM Networks
Authors: Kamisetty Ramamohan Rao, Zoran Bojkovic
Venue:  (1999)

From the Book:PREFACE: PrefaceFive broad aspects characterize a modern communications network: Transmission. A means of transporting bits across a medium. Switching, routing. Given an "increment of information" (a frame, a cell, a circuit), determine the destination of that increment. Signaling. Provide a method by which users can describe to the network what they want to do. Services. Provide "something of value" that the user wants. Management. Provide for the handling of faults, connections, and traffic flow.These five terms have existed and have been used for a long time in the communications industry. They have, however, over the years become confused, redefined, misapplied, and indistinct. In the "old" days when there was only circuit switching and the function was performed by mechanical switches, transmission was analog over twisted pair subscriber loops, signaling was by dial tone/pulse dialing, and services included end-to-end telephony/long distance/operator assistance. The terms were fairly obvious.The ability of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks to combine voice, video, and data communications capabilities in a single network are expected to make ATM the networking method of choice for video delivery in the future. The ATM Forum is currently developing standards to address the issues associated with video delivery. The marriage of communications and computers has opened a new era in interactive audio-visual applications. The Audiovisual Multimedia Services Technical Committee is currently addressing the issues relating to numerous videoapplications,including broadcast video, videoconferencing, desktop multimedia, video on demand, interactive video, near video on demand, distance learning, and interactive games. Packet video communications over ATM networks is a rapidly evolving field with growing applications in science and industry 1, 257. Packet Video Communications over ATM Networks provides a comprehensive coverage of various surveys of the current issues relating to video delivery over ATM networks. This book addresses the fundamentals of the major topics of video communications over ATM networks: asynchronous transfer mode technique, scalability, MPEG digital video standards, quality of service, and multimedia communications. We have focused our attention on mature topics with the hope that the level of discussion provided will enable an engineer or a scientist to design a packet video communication system over ATM networks or conduct research on advanced and newly emerging topics. The objective of this book is not only to familiarize the reader with packet video communications over ATM networks, but also to provide the underlying theory, concepts, and principles related to these problems, including the power and the practical utility of the topics. In most cases, the applications are described conceptually, rather than in detail.A major challenge during the preparation of this book was the rapid pace of development, both in software and hardware related to packet video communications over ATM networks. Many specific applications have been realized in the past few years. We have tried to keep pace by including many of these latest developments. In this way, it is hoped that the book is timely and will appeal to a wide audience in the engineering, scientific, and technical communities.In addition, we have included more than 180 figures and over 518 references. Although this book is primarily for graduate students, it can be also very useful for academia, researchers, scientists, and engineers dealing with packet video communications over ATM networks.