Real-time communication services related to encoded video transmission over a high-speed network such as ATM need a new integrated protocol architecture to meet the required quality. Data cells are exposed to delays and losses, which affect the video signal quality, and so adequate processing is needed in order to keep the quality of service as an acceptable level. The authors propose the design of a new adaptation of MPEG-2 video in ATM networks in order to improve the video visual quality. The approach, based on a new MPEG-2 protocol architecture, tries to overcome the difficulty imposed by traditional random cell discarding due to the bursty aspect of the traffic and the variable bit rate transmission nature of encoded video. The importance of including a dynamic bandwidth reallocation and appropriate interleaving technique for bursty encoded video traffic being carried in an ATM network is shown, by comparing the degradation quality of an MPEG-2 sequence with and without the proposed techniques. The results show that the proposed interface is effective in solving the cell-loss problem and thus enhances the QoS for MPEG-2 video transmission in ATM networks.
