Advances in video networking: standards and applications

The interdisciplinary nature of video networking, coupled with various recent developments in standards, proposals and applications, poses great challenges to the research and industrial communities working in this area. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a tutorial and survey on recent advances in video networking from an integrated perspective of both video signal processing and networking.

Detailed technical descriptions and insightful analysis are presented for recent and emerging video coding standards, in particular the H.264 family. The applications of selected video coding standards in emerging wireless networks are then introduced with an emphasis on scalable video streaming in multihomed mobile networks. Both research challenges and potential solutions are discussed along the description, and numerical results through simulations or experiments are provided to reveal the performances of selected coding standards and networking algorithms.

The tutorial helps to clarify the similarities and differences among the considered standards and networking applications. A number of research trends and challenges are identified, and selected promising solutions are discussed. This practice would provoke further thoughts on the development of this area and open up more research and application opportunities.

Not all the concerned video coding standards are complemented with thorough studies of networking application scenarios.

The discussed video coding standards are either playing or going to play indispensable roles in the video industry; the introduced networking scenarios bring together these standards and various emerging wireless networking paradigms towards innovative application scenarios.

The comprehensive overview and critiques on existing standards and application approaches offer a valuable reference for researchers and system developers in related research and industrial communities.