Future Work

The present project had as one of its main ideals, the purpose of allowing further scaling. It was thought and designed having in mind future improvements and upgrades. This was a scalable prototype, aimed to study and find a solution to interface between video transport platforms. Some of the proposed future work is product of resource constraints, other is product of previously thought upgrades and possible additions.

• Improvement of validation tools. The validation system consists of a video generation block responsible to generating stimulus in the project inputs. However, as already explained, the ancillary data, despite being in conformity with the standards, is not valid, or in other words, is dummy. That means it cannot be validated in all its extension. For example, the timecode values are not generated, which means that a 4 cable system, which is completely dependent of order synchronization of video data could not be constructed before correct timecode generation.

• Scale the network protocol. SMPTE 2022-6 is only standardized for 3G video over IP, however, in conjunction with the 10Gb Ethernet solution, it would be possible to manage multiple SMPTE 2022-6 implementations in parallel, generating parallel datagrams, so that better video formats could be transported in the network.

• 4 cables system. As mentioned during the Requirements analysis, this system is the fun-damental pillar of a 4 cable system targeted to transport 4K video as 4 1080p frames as defined on the SMPTE 425-5 standard (figure6.1). This would be the next obvious stage in terms of performance upgrades. 4 SMPTE UHD-SDI modules would be required, each of which would be in charge of dealing with one 1080p video resolution. Timecodes would be a critical feature, as well as memory accesses.

6.2 Future Work 73

Figure 6.1: The 425-3 and 425-5 SMPTE standards to define 4K frame using four sub-images [41]

Figure 6.1 shows how SMPTE 425-3 and SMPTE 425-5 standardizes the transport of 4K frames on 4 streams.

• Improving the system to 4K using the 12-SDI. This would be the natural improvement if 8K is an objective. It would also be possible to use 16 3G-SDI cables for an 8K system, but that would be more resource demanding. Moreover, the hardware would become far more complex and expensive and the logic organization also prone to fails. Improving the system to 12G-SDI would require the usage of 2 different clock sources, due to Clock Recovery Unit demands. The QPLL would also need to be used, and the clock frequency used would be 297MHz. This would demand stricter timing requirements. In spite of the high demands, the developed system is ready to be upgraded this way. The upper wrapper allows for easy changing of CPLL, QPLL and SMPTE UHD-SDI parameters in order to perform the upgrade. The SMPTE UHD-SDI module would use 16 video streams instead of the 2 used on the actual system. Despite the changing in configurations, timecodes would again not be a critical step, since the whole video information would be transmitted through 1 single cable.

• Implementing 8K system. If the 4K system using 1 cable on the 12G-SDI mode mentioned above, was implemented, then an 8K system would be a possible step further. This solution is not standardized and is still only target of prototyping. However, it would be at the moment the most resource balanced way of achieving 8K resolutions.

• Implementing the Internet layers. As a result of resource constrains the implementation of a real IP system output and its layers was not implemented. Therefore, the step to transform this prototype into a real product would be to implement the remaining system. A valid 10

Gb Ethernet solution was already analyzed and could be the base of a more complex internet distribution dedicated system.

• Forward Error Correction (FEC). The developed system incorporates CRC techniques that allow the SMPTE UHD-SDI Receiver to identify if there were video transmission errors during SDI transmission. However, the change of platforms from SDI to IP brings out a different kind of data losses. Despite network packet loss, which is properly identified by the RTP protocol, packet corruption can also be a problem. Therefore, the Forward Error Correction algorithm can be applied to endure video network packets reliability. It is also described on the SMPTE 2022-6 standard.

• Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration. The next step related to dynamic partial reconfiguration is to implement an automatic system capable of loading the bitstreams when an event is triggered.

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