||Jai Sri Gurudev ||

Sri Adichunchanagiri Shikshana Trust®

SJB INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Accredited by NBA & NAAC with ‘A’ Grade
No. 67, BGS Health & Education City, Dr. Vishnuvardhan Road
Kengeri, Bangalore – 560 060

Department of Electronics & Communication

Engineering
Multimedia Communication

MODULE – 1
Notes (as per Syllabus 2022)

Academic Year: 2024 – 2025 ( Even Sem )

Course Coordinator : Mrs.Jyothi H

Designation & Dept Assistant Professor, ECE

 MULTIMEDIA COMMUNICATIONS

Multimedia Communications: Introduction, Multimedia information

representation, Multimedia
networks, multimedia applications, Application and networking terminology
8 Hours
Textbooks:
Multimedia Communications –Fred Halsall, Pearson Education,2001,ISBN-
978813170994
ReferenceBooks:
1. Multimedia: Computing, Communications and Applications- Raif Steinmetz, Klara
Nahrstedt, Pearson
Education, 2002, ISBN-978817758
2. FundamentalsofMultimedia–Ze-NianLi,MarkSDrew,andJiangchuanLiu
Journals & Proceedings:

1. M. Tatipamula and B. Khasnabish (Eds.), Multimedia Communication Networks

Technologies and Services, Artech House, Boston, 1998.
2. ISO8348 OSI Data Communication – Network Service Definition, 1997.
3. K. R. Rao and Z. S. Bojkovic, Packet Video Communications Over ATM Networks,
Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2000.
4. ITU MEDIACOM2004, Project Description – Version 3.0, March 2002.
5. ISO7498/1-4 OSI, Information Processing Systems – Basic Reference Model of OSI,
1998.
6. N. Modiri, The ISO reference model entities, IEEE Network Magazine, 5, 24–33 (1991).
7. ISO8072, Information Processing Systems – Open Systems Interconnection – Oriented
Transport Service Definition, 1987.
8. A. R. Modarressi and S. Mohan, Control and management in next-generation
networks: challenges and opportunities, IEEE Comm. Magazine, 38, 94–102
(2000).
 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

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.
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

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.

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,
sufficient for multimedia. In the synchronized mode, FDDI has a low access latency and
low jitter. 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
▪ Data networks:
▪ Broadcast television networks

▪ Integrated services digital networks

▪ Broadcast multiservice networks

CO packet switched network including routing table:

 ▪ 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

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 confe

Interactive television:

(a) cable distribution network (b) satellite/terrestrial broadcast network

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

Media Types

Network Typess
Multimedia applications
 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]