How ATM Networks Ensure a Transparent Transport of Real-Time Professional Broadcast Services

With the combination of digital TV and digital networking technologies the transport of professional broadcast services is undergoing a tremendous evolution. After a move from analog to digital, specialized leased lines are progressively being replaced by powerful general purpose ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) based networks. — The most critical issue for the adoption of this new technology by the broadcast industry is the transport of live real-time broadcast services, for which the most serious constraints appear. The level of performance, which can be expected for this type of application, is a key point for the end-user broadcaster. — Real-time services are most often transported compressed using video compression formats such as MPEG-2 or DV. Transit delay, jitter performance, robustness against transmission errors, synchronization between receivers and emitters are typical parameters to qualify the related constraints. — After reminding some key elements of the ATM technology, this paper focuses on performance aspects. The mechanisms put in place, leading to commitments that both the end-user broadcaster and the network operator have to fulfill to meet a given level of performance are explained. Practical performance results are given, and examples of large-scale deployments are described.

Published

2000-10

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00142

ISBN

978-1-61482-933-1