Multimedia Communication Systems: Techniques, Standards, and Networks
Authors: Kamisetty Ramamohan Rao, Z. S. Bojkovic, D. A. Milovanovic
Venue:  (2002)

From the Book:PrefaceThe past years have seen an explosion in the use of digital media. Industry is making significant investments to deliver digital audio, image and video information to consumers and customers. A new infrastructure of digital audio, image and video recorders and players; online services and electronic commerce is rapidly being deployed. At the same time, major corporations are converting their audio, image and video archives to an electronic form. Digital media offer several distinct advantages over analog media. The quality of digital audio, image and video signals is higher than that of their analog counterparts. Editing is easy because one can access the exact discrete locations that need to be changed. Copying is simple with no loss of fidelity. A copy of digital media is identical to the original. Digital audio, image and video are easily transmitted across networked information systems. These advantages have opened up many new possibilities.Multimedia consists of Multimedia data + Set of interactions. Multimedia data is informally considered as the collection of three Ms: multisource, multitype and multiformat data. The interactions among the multimedia components consist of complex relationships without which multimedia would be a simple set of visual, audio and other data.Multimedia and multimedia communication can be globally viewed as a hierarchical system. The multimedia software and applications provide a direct interactive environment for users. When a computer requires information from remote computers or servers, multimedia information must travel through computer networks. Because the amount of information involved inthe transmission of video and audio can be substantial, the multimedia information must be compressed before it can be sent through the network in order to reduce the communication delay. Constraints, such as limited delay and jitter, are used to ensure a reasonable video and audio effect at the receiving end. Therefore, communication networks are undergoing constant improvements in order to provide for multimedia communication capabilities. LANs are used to connect local computers and other equipment, and Wide Area Networks (WANs) and the Internet connect the LANs together. Better standards are constantly being developed, in order to provide a global information superhighway across which multimedia information will travel.Organization of the BookThe book is organized into six chapters:Chapter 1 describes the concept of multimedia communication modeling. It presents a brief description of elements for multimedia systems. After that, we discuss user and network requirements together with the packet transfer concept. An overview of multimedia terminals is also given.Chapter 2 explains that multimedia communication is more than simply putting together text, audio, images and video. It reviews a recent trend in multimedia research to exploit the audio-visual interaction and to build the link between audio and video processing. The emphasis is on lip reading, synchronization and tracing audio-to-visual mapping as well as the bimodal person verification.Chapter 3 is devoted to multimedia processing in communication. We present and analyze digital media and signal processing elements. Next, we describe a general framework for image copyright protection through digital watermarking. We then review the key attributes of neural processing essential to intelligent multimedia processing. Finally, this chapter concludes with recent large-scale-integration programmable processors designed for multimedia processing such as real-time compression and decompression of audio and video as well as the next generation of computer graphics.Chapter 4 deals with the issues concerning distributed multimedia systems. We give an overview: main features, resource management, networking and multimedia operating systems. Next, we identify the applications like interactive television, telecooperation and hypermedia, and we survey the important enabling technologies.Chapter 5 focuses on multimedia communication standards. We discuss Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG)-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-4 Visual Texture Coding (VTC), Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)-2000, MPEG-7, MPEG-21, International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunication Sector (ITU-T) and Internet standards. We discuss the ITU-T standardization process in multimedia communications from the video and speech coding, as well as from multimedia, multiplex and synchronization points of view (H.320, H.321, H.322, H.323, H.262, H.263, H.26L, H.221, H.222, H.223 and H.225).Chapter 6 concentrates on multimedia communication across networks. After an introduction about packet audio-video in the network environment, we discuss the concept of video transport across generic networks. Multimedia transport over ATM networks is described, too. We then move to multimedia across IP networks, including video transmission, traffic specification for MPEG video transmission on the Internet and bandwidth allocation mechanism. We present and illustrate the concepts of Internet access networks. In addition, we discuss special issues relating to multimedia across wireless networks such as wireless broadband communication for multimedia audiovisual solutions, mobile and broadcasting networks and digital TV infrastructure for interactive multimedia services.Appendix/Web SiteAppendix A contains useful information available on the Internet: standardization organizations, associations, alliances, fora and consortia; documents, software and hardware reference, and a products and services list. No software is provided. The appendix can be downloaded at the following Web site: www.phptr.com/raoReferencesThe references are grouped according to the various chapters. Special efforts have been taken to make this list as up to date and exhaustive as possible.A number of forces are driving communications, such as the following: The evolution of communications and data networks in today's modern Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) network and packet (including the Internet) networks, with major forces driving these networks into an integrated structure The increasing availability of almost unlimited bandwidth demand in the office, the home and eventually on the road, based on high-speed data modems, cable modems, hybrid fiber-mix systems, and, recently, a number of fixed wireless access systems The availability of ubiquitous access to the network through Local Area Networks (LANs), wireline and wireless networks providing the promise of anywhere, anytime access The ever-increasing amount of memory and computation brought to bear on virtually any communications or computing system The terminals, including sophisticated screen phones; digital telephones; multimedia personal computers (PCs) that handle a wide range of text, image, audio and video signals; network computers and other low-cost Internet-access terminals and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) of all types that can access and interact with the network using wired and wireless connections The digitalization of virtually all devices, including cameras, video capture devices, video playback devices, handwriting terminals, sound capture devices and so forthMultimedia Communication Systems provides a comprehensive coverage of various surveys of the current issues relating to multimedia communications. This book addresses the fundamentals of the major topics of the multimedia communication systems: audio-visual integration, multimedia processing in communications, distributed multimedia systems, multimedia communication standards and multimedia communications across networks.We have focused our attention on these topics with the hope that the level of discussion provided will enable an engineer or a scientist to design multimedia communication systems or to conduct research on advanced and newly emerging topics. The objective of this book is not only to familiarize the reader with multimedia communication systems, but also to provide the underlying theory, concepts and principles related to these disciplines, including the power and the practical utility of the topics.A major challenge during the preparation of this book was the rapid pace of development, both in software and hardware related to multimedia communication systems. We have tried to keep pace by including many of the latest developments. In this way, it is hoped that the book is timely and appeals to a wide audience in the engineering, scientific and technical communities. In addition, we have included more than 270 figures and more than 800 references. Although this book is primarily for graduate students, it can be also very useful for academia, researchers, scientists and engineers dealing with multimedia communication systems.