Image browsing and animation over a local ATM testbed

We argue for a time-driven approach for interactive multimedia communication applications. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional data-driven style almost universally adopted. The time-driven approach can take advantage of the multiple communication channels of various quality-of-service levels that will be supported by ATM networks. Such applications can rely on and take advantage of forms of hierarchical coding for handling real-time continuous media (e.g., video, image animations, audio, etc.) effectively and efficiently. In many such cases (e.g., image database browsing), timely presentation is more important than lossless presentation. The use of hierarchical coding by applications will allow the network to intelligently discard traffic of lesser importance to the applications at times of high congestion, and will thus allow networks to operate at higher degrees of statistical multiplexing without causing problems for the integrity of the most important signal components. We present some initial performance results of a simple hierarchically encoded image animation in a local ATM environment, including some results of the image quality when loss is experienced.