Interoperability of the Grand Alliance HDTV system with ATM networks

This paper describes three experiments that were conducted as supplementary field tests of the Digital Grand Alliance HDTV system. They were performed to test the feasibility of ATM network transport of the MPEG-2 based digital HDTV bit stream. The MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) and its mapping into asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) cells are succinctly described as background for the description of the experiments. Three experiments are then described, including the successful transport of the digital HDTV bit stream through more than 510 miles of fiber optic transmission and the equivalent of six ATM switches in tandem.