FRAUNHOFER researchers
at HHI Berlin have developed the cross-layer design SVC over LTE – a coding
method that offers HD films in real-time in the appropriate format for cell
phones or netbooks, a development that will support mobile CCTV applications.
Clumsy page
layouts, slow page load times of podcasts and videos: Today’s available
bandwidths on mobile phone networks vary widely, due to the number and mobility
of the users, the location within the mobile network cell, or the capacity of
the terminal. Particularly in bandwidth-intensive services, like video
streaming, transmissions are frequently subject to disconnections, gaps or
interruptions.
The mobile
telecommunications standard of tomorrow – Long Term Evolution, or LTE for short
– will change everything. It has a higher performance capacity than UMTS, and
reaches download speeds being comparable to landline-based DSL broadband
network. Not only e-mails and Internet traffic, particularly video surveillance
and mobile television benefit from LTE as the breakthrough for mobile Internet
technology.
The
“Multicore SVC Real-time Encoder” encodes a basic version of the
video, the base layer, and places several enhancement layers in the SVC bit
stream next to the base layer in one single processing step. Partial decoding
of the scalable bit stream allows graceful degradation and bit rate, format and
power adaptation. LTE can now use a higher error protection to transmit the
base layer.
This allows each
mobile terminal can always decode the basic version of the video stream and
guarantees the transmission of video services everywhere and for every given
point of time. Under good network conditions, the mobile user can benefit from
premium video quality by decoding additional enhancement layers. Current
postage stamp-sized, hiccupping video streams used in mobile applications will soon
be a thing of the past.
