Munich, Germany, November 7, 2006

Photos of the event

Chairs:
Prof. Dietrich Sauter, Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH (IRT), Germany
Dr. Peter Holleczek, University of Erlangen / GI-Fachgruppe Echtzeitsysteme, Germany

Live television, such as the Soccer World Championship in 2006, requires the transmission of audio- and video signals in real-time and in high quality across data networks. The Symposium on "Real-Time Behaviour of Data Networks for Audio and Video Transmissions" describes the requirements of real-time applications towards transmission networks, provides detailed examples and presents an overview of future network technologies using current research developments.

Nowadays, audio- and video signals are transmitted across data networks in real-time with varying levels of quality. Examples are college classes via videoconferencing, medical diagnoses using video communication and live transmissions for television and video productions. Whenever lossy source coding cannot be tolerated or the latency of a compression algorithm would make it impossible to carry out an interactive application, uncompressed high quality video signals are transmitted with data rates up to 1.5 Gbps. These signals are a real challenge for data networks, not only because of their high data rates: They also require a deterministic behaviour concerning temporal characteristics such as delay and jitter. Unexpected temporal variations at the destination can occur especially in networks, where real-time applications must compete with all other application packets en route. If these variations become too large, the video- and audio signals suffer from unacceptable interruptions.

At the Symposium, the requirements of real-time applications towards data networks will be described in connection with applications such as video conferencing and television. Methods will be introduced that can be used for measuring the quality of transmitted signals across national and international networks. The infrastructure and performance of real-time networks will be explained with the examples of the distribution network of the ARD (Hybnet), with distributed and interactive video productions (Uni-TV) and with the data network that was set up for the Soccer World Championship 2006 in Germany. In addition, there will be an overview of future national and international networks based on the example of the research project MUPBED.

Programme: (Abstracts are available in German (pdf))
10:30 - 10:45	Welcome and Introduction Dr. Klaus Illgner, IRT, Germany Prof. Dietrich Sauter, IRT, Germany Dr. Peter Holleczek, University of Erlangen/GI-Fachgruppe Echtzeitsysteme, Germany Hans-Martin Foisel, Deutsche Telekom, Germany
	Network Requirements
10:45 - 11:15	Application Requirements: Bandwidth, Delay, Jitter, Security Andreas Metz, IRT, Germany
11:15 - 11:45	Impact of Delay and Jitter on Videoconferencing Ralf Kleineisel, GÉANT2-Lab, University of Erlangen, Germany
11:45 - 12:15	Examples from Television Carsten Gertzen, ARD-Sternpunkt, Germany
	Network Measurements
12:15-12:45	Time-Synchronous Performance Measurements for IP and Ethernet Layers Jochen Reinwand, WiN Laboratory, Germany
12:45-13:45	Lunch
	Networks with Real-Time Requirements
13:45 - 14:15	Hybnet Markus Berg, Roger Heimann, IRT, Germany
14:15 - 14:45	Distributed Interactive TV-Productions with Uni-TV Michael Gräve, University of Erlangen, Germany
14:45-15:15	Coffee Break
	Network Design
15:15 - 15:45	Design of Future National and International Networks with the Examples of VIOLA / MUPBED Hans-Martin Foisel, Deutsche Telekom, Berlin
15:45 - 16:15	Performance Measurements within the European Project MUPBED Susanne Naegele-Jackson, MUPBED, University of Erlangen, Germany
16:15 - 16:30	Summary: Tendencies for Real-Time Applications in Data Networks Dr. Peter Holleczek, GI-Fachgruppe Echtzeitsysteme, Germany