Public Safety Systems (PSS) are communication networks oriented towards supporting activities of public safety actors (police, medical, fire-fighters, etc.). TErrestrial Trunked RAdio (TETRA) is a Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) standard designed to meet PSS requirements with specialized voice communication features and reliable, secure communication links. TETRA Release 2 introduces TETRA Enhanced Data Service (TEDS), to support emerging data-intensive applications such as online navigation and tele-medicine by providing higher, scalable data rates.
This thesis studies the feasibility of streaming video over a wideband TEDS link using the H.264/AVC codec, a video compression standard that manages to retain high decoded video quality while dramatically reducing streaming bit rate. A bandwidth limiter is used to emulate a link that supports data rates equivalent to those specified in the TEDS standard. Effects of video streaming parameters such as codec rate and play-out buffer size coupled with link-induced delay variation on decoded video quality are investigated. Visual quality is rated using objective quality metrics to quantify results with some measure of reliability.
The overall aim is to identify the technical requirements needed to support an acceptable quality of video transmission over TEDS. To this end, we measure decoded video quality in different channel loss conditions, varying video streaming parameters and at different channel bandwidths, plus enhancements such as data traffic prioritisation as defined in the TEDS specification
