A. Helmy et al. (Eds.): MMNS 2006, LNCS 4267, pp. 247 – 255, 2006. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2006 End-to-End QoS Issues of MPEG4-FGS Video Streaming Traffic Delivery in an IP/UMTS Network Thomas Pliakas 1 , George Kormentzas 1 , and Charalabos Skianis 1,2 1 Universiy of Aegean, Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, GR-83200, Karlovassi, Greece {tpliakas, gkorm}@aegean.gr 2 National Centre for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’, Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications skianis@iit.demokritos.gr Abstract. The paper addresses the end-to-end QoS problem of MPEG4-FGS video streaming traffic delivery over a heterogeneous IP/UMTS network. It proposes and validates an architecture that explores the joint use of packet prioritization and scalable video coding together with the appropriate mapping of UMTS traffic classes to the DiffServ traffic classes. A set of simulation scenarios, involving eight different video sequences, demonstrates the quality gains of both scalable video coding and prioritized packetization. Keywords: DiffServ, End-to-End QoS, MPEG4-FGS, Packet Prioritization, UMTS. 1 Introduction Fixed and wireless/mobile network operators face a twin challenge: to create and deliver attractive IP-based multimedia services quickly in response to fast-changing business and customer demands; and to evolve their current underlying networking infrastructures to an architecture that can deliver such services in a highly adaptable and guaranteed end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) way both from network and application perspectives. Simultaneously, on the customer side, for the next few years at least, there will be a wide variety of mobile/wireless access technologies supporting IP connectivity. These technologies include: mobile communication networks, such as GPRS [1] and UMTS [2], the family of broadband radio access networks, like IEEE 802.11 [3] and HIPERLAN [4], and wireless broadcasting technologies, like digital video broadcasting (DVB—satellite and terrestrial [5]). IP technology seems to be able to resolve the interworking amongst the diverse fixed core and wireless/mobile access technologies at the network level. In this all-IP network, the end-to-end QoS provision concerning the network perspective could be established through the appropriate mapping amongst the QoS traffic classes/services supported by the contributing underlying networking technologies. Building on this context, this work concerns a DiffServ-aware IP core network and a UMTS access