Realization and performance evaluation of a failure-resistant ATM transport (FRAT) method for high-quality video transmission services

As video compression technology advances and hardware prices drop, real-time applications using digital video such as video conferencing systems have been put to practical use. Some of these kinds of applications require extremely high transmission quality such as program distribution for digital TV broadcasting. Various compression methods with a variety of compression rates are used for digital video. Although ATM is suitable for efficiently transmitting these kinds of real-time signals with a variety of speeds, the implementation of a transmission method that does not allow the video or audio to be interrupted or distorted even when a chance transmission channel failure or bit error occurs is becoming a key issue. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of implementing a “failure-resistant ATM transport (FRAT) method” for the transmission of high-quality real-time applications, which can compensate for random errors without causing information loss even when a transmission channel failure occurs and can prevent buffer underflow at the receiving terminal by minimizing delay variation even if a failure occurs. In addition, this paper shows the effectiveness and characteristics of the proposed method. Specifically, this paper presents an overview of the proposed method and describes the method of implementing it in detail. Also, a trial transmission device based on this implementation method is used to verify the operation of the proposed method, and the characteristics of this device are shown by comparing theoretical values with experimental values for the amount of delay variation, which is considered the most important factor in the transmission of real-time signals. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 86(9): 90–101, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience. wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.1176