Rashtreeya Sikshana Samithi Trust

RV Institute of Technology and Management®

(Affiliated to VTU, Belagavi)
JP Nagar, Bengaluru – 560076

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Course Name: Multimedia Communications

Course Code: 18EC743
VII Semester
2018 Scheme

Prepared By:

Dr. Madhumathy P
Associate Professor,
Department of ECE
RVITM, Bengaluru – 560076

Email: [email protected]
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MODULE – 1: MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS

Syllabus

MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS: Introduction, multimedia information

representation, multimedia networks, multimedia applications, media types, communication modes,
network types, multipoint conferencing, network QoS application QoS

1.1 Introduction

Multimedia communications have emerged as a major research and development area.

In particular, computers in multimedia open a wide range of possibilities by combining
different types of digital media such as text, graphics, audio, and video. The emergence of the
World Wide Web (WWW), two decades ago, has fuelled the growth of multimedia
computing.

Multimedia – an interactive presentation of speech, audio, video, graphics, and text,

has become a major theme in today‘s information technology that merges the practices
of communications, computing, and information processing into an interdisciplinary field. In
recent years, there has been a tremendous amount of activity in the area of multimedia
communications: applications, middleware, and networking. A variety of techniques from
various disciplines such as image and video processing, computer vision, audio and speech
processing, statistical pattern recognition, learning theory, and data-based research have been
employed.
In this chapter, we are interested in multimedia communications; that is, we are
interested in the transmission of multimedia information over networks. By multimedia, we
mean data, voice, graphics, still images, audio, and video, and we require that the networks
support the transmission of multiple media, often at the same time.

Fig 1.1: components of multimedia communication network

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Fig. 1.1: components of multimedia communication network

In Figure 1.1 the Source consists of any one or more of the multimedia sources, and the
job of the Source Terminal is to compress the Source such that the bit rate delivered to the
network connection between the Source Terminal and the Destination Terminal is at least
approximately appropriate. Other factors may be considered by the Source Terminal as well.
For example, the Source Terminal may be a battery-power-limited device or may be aware
that the Destination Terminal is limited in signal processing power or display capability.
Further, the Source Terminal may packetize the data in a special way to guard against
packet loss and aid error concealment at the Destination Terminal. All such factors impinge
on the design of the Source Terminal. The Access Network may be reasonably modeled by a
single line connection, such as a 28.8 Kbit/s modem, a 56 Kbit/s modem, a 1.5 Mbit/s
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) line, and so on, or it may actually be a network
that has shared capacity, and hence have packet loss and delay characteristics in addition to
certain rate constraints. The Backbone Network may consist of a physical circuit switched
connection, a dedicated virtual path through a packet-switched network, or a standard best-
effort Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) connection, among other
possibilities. Thus, this network has characteristics such as bandwidth, latency, jitter, and
packet loss, and may or may not have the possibility of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees.
The Delivery Network may have the same general set of characteristics as the Access
Network,
or one may envision that in a one-to-many transmission that the Delivery Network might
be a corporate intranet.

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Finally, the Destination Terminal may have varying power, mobility, display or audio
capabilities.
• ―Multimedia‖ indicate that the information/data being transferred over the
network may be composed of one or more of the following media types:

– Text

– Images

– Audio

– video

Media types

– Text: unformatted text, formatted text

– Images: computer-generated, pictures

– Audio: speech, music, general audio

– Video: video clips, movies, films

• Network types

• Multimedia + Network → multimedia communications

1.2. Multimedia Information Representation

 Text, images

• Blocks of digital data

• Does not vary with time (time-independent)

• Audio, video

• Vary with time (time-dependent)

• Analog signal

• Must be converted into digital form for integration

 Communication networks cannot support the high bit rates of audio, video
→ Compression is applied to digitized signals.

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1.3 Multimedia Networks

Many applications, such as video mail, video conferencing, and collaborative work
systems, require networked multimedia. In these applications, the multimedia objects are
stored at a server and played back at the client‘s sites. Such applications might require
broadcasting multimedia data to various remote locations or accessing large depositories of
multimedia sources. Multimedia networks require a very high transfer rate or bandwidth,
even when the
Data is compressed. Traditional networks are used to provide error-free transmission.
However, most multimedia applications can tolerate errors in transmission due to corruption
or packet loss without retransmission or correction. In some cases, to meet real-time delivery
requirements or to achieve synchronization, some packets are even discarded. As a result,
we can apply lightweight transmission protocols to multimedia networks. These protocols
cannot accept retransmission, since that might introduce unacceptable delays.

Multimedia networks must provide the low latency required for interactive operation.
Since multimedia data must be synchronized when it arrives at the destination site, networks
should provide synchronized transmission with low jitter. In multimedia networks, most
communications are multipoint as opposed to traditional point-to-point communication. For
example, conferences involving more than two participants need to distribute information in
different media to each participant.

Conference networks use multicasting and bridging distribution methods.

Multicasting replicates a single input signal and delivers it to multiple destinations. Bridging
combines multiple input signals into one or more output signals, which then deliver to the
participants.
Traditional networks do not suit multimedia Ethernet, which provides only 10 Mbps,
its access time is not bounded, and its latency and jitter are unpredictable. Token-ring
networks provide 16 Mbps and are deterministic. From this point of view, they can handle
multimedia. However, the predictable worst case access latency can be very high.
A fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) network provides 100 Mb/s bandwidth,
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sufficient for multimedia. In the synchronized mode, FDDI has a low access latency and low
jitter.
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It also guarantees a bounded access delay and a predictable average bandwidth for
synchronous traffic. However, due to the high cost, FDDI networks are used primarily
for backbone networks, rather than networks of workstations.

Telephone networks

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Fig 1.2 Telephone network

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Data networks:

Fig 1.3 Data Networks

Broadcast television networks

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Fig 1.4 Broadcast TV Network

Integrated services digital networks

Fig 1.5 Integrated services digital networks

Broadcast multiservice networks

Fig 1.6 Broadcast multiservice networks

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CO packet switched network including routing table:

Fig 1.7 packet switched network

Connection-oriented (CO) network

 Prior to sending any information, connection is first set up through the network using
source and destination address

 Interconnected set of packet switching exchanges (PSE)

 virtual connection, virtual circuit (VC): only variable bandwidth

portion of each link X.25, ATM network

 X.25

 Transfer of files containing text and binary data

 ATM network

 Support all types of multimedia

 Cell: fixed size (53 bytes) packet

 Fast packet-switching network

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Communication modes:

(a) unicast

 Simplex:

Information flows in one direction only Ex)

transmission of images from deep space probe

 Half-duplex: two-way alternate Information flows in both directions but

alternatively Ex) remote server

 Duplex: two-way simultaneous Information flows in both directions

simultaneously Ex) video telephony

(b) Broadcast:

Information output by a single source is received by all other nodes. Ex) cable program
over cable network.

c) Multicast: Information output by source is received by specific nodes multicast

group Ex) video conferencing

Fig. 1.8 a(unicast) b(Broadcast) c( Multicast)

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Interactive television:

(a) cable distribution network (b)

satellite/terrestrial broadcast
network

Fig. 1.9 (a) cable distribution network (b) satellite/terrestrial broadcast

Cable network

 STB provides both low bit rate connection to PSTN and high bit rate
connection to Internet

 Subscriber is able to actively respond to the information being broadcast

through PSTN

 Typical return channel use: voting, game, home shopping

 Satellite and terrestrial broadcast networks

 STB provides similar service

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Media Types

Multimedia applications

Fig 1.10 Media types

Network Types

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Fig 1.11 Network types

Recommended questions:

1. Define Mutimedia.? [02]

2. List some of Multimedia applications.[05]
3. List the multimedia communication networks.[05]
4. State Nyquist sampling theorem & Nyquist rate.[05]
5. What do you mean by Hypertext?[04]
6. What is compression? [03]
7. Compare lossy & lossless compression.[07]
8. State & explain the basic form of representation of: Text, Image, Audio, Video?[10]
9. Explain the meaning of bps in relation to digitized audio & video.[05]
10. Explain the meaning of compression & why it is used?[08]
11. Explain the meaning of POTS, local exchange office, PBX, mobile switching centre,
international gateway exchange.[08]
12. Explain why most data networks operate in a packet mode. Hence explain why services
involving audio and video are supported?[10]
13. Explain ―Broadband‖ in relation to B-ISDN and why deployment has been delayed?[08]
14. Describe the principal operation of a fax machine & why modems are required. What is the
meaning of PC fax?[10]
15. With aid of block diagram explain CSCW?[10]
16. Explain a Web server, a browser, WWW?[05]
17. Explain web page, home page, hyperlink, URL, HTML?[10]

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