An experimental 4D video communication platform

With reference to recent efforts within the entertainment industry in providing sensory (thermal, olfactory) stimulation associated with audio-visual contents, this paper describes a work aiming at an integration of a novel multisensorial reproduction system into multimedia streams. Our prototype 4D platform is first outlined, and its main architectural and technological features are highlighted. Then the coding and transport of control signals to the sensory actuators is focused on, also taking into due consideration a careful survey of currently available or candidate standards to properly support our application. Namely, the adoption of MPEG-V standard allowed us to provide a way to efficiently encode sensory effects information (data, control instructions), and to embed such information as data frames into MPEG family transport streams. Moreover, since multisensorial control data should be error free at the receiver side in order to properly drive the sensory actuators, we developed our experimental system upon an all optical transmission platform, which best fits our application requirements due to its topmost reliability, based on the interconnection of a MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) and a GPON (Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Network).