Video aggregation: adapting video traffic for transport over broadband networks by integrating data compression and statistical multiplexing

Future broadband integrated services networks based on the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology are expected to carry information from a large variety of different services and applications. This paper investigates video aggregation, a concept that integrates compression and statistical multiplexing of video information for transport over a communication network. We focus on the transmission of a group of video sessions as a bundle, the practical examples of which include entertainment-video broadcast and video-on-demand (VoD). In this situation, the advantage of constant bit-rate (CBR) transport (which facilitates simple network management and operation) and the advantage of variable bit-rate (VBR) video compression (which yields smoother image quality) can be achieved simultaneously. We show that it is better to integrate compression and statistical multiplexing before the bundle of video traffic enters the network than performing them as independent processes. We present experimental results which indicate the advantages of video aggregation in terms of superior image quality and efficient bandwidth usage.