Performance Measurement of Video Streaming in UMTS Networks Development of a quality assurance tool for most efficent video encoding parameters adaptive to the underlying third generation radio network

UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) the third generation of mobile data services introduces a new wireless state-of-the-art technology and thus much higher data speeds to mobile and portable wireless devices. Streaming Media is one of the applications that takes major advantage of the new technology due to higher bit rates available. The objective of this book is to introduce a high quality video streaming system for an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The main focus will be quality criteria for video streaming that can easily be handled. Therefore a quality assurance tool was developed which measures the quality of a transmitted video stream. The tool enables the ISP to adapt video encoding parameters for the underlying third generation network and to evaluate video playback capabilities of third generation mobile phones. The achieved results provide essential input for the ISP to adapt the encoding profiles for UMTS terminals. Moreover the tool helps to obtain valuable statistics of network traffic due to real-time data transmission.