Approach to the joint optimization of video communications and video signal processing
William A. Pearlman, Michael J. Medley, Bruce W. Suter · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2001
Compressed video bitstreams require protection from channel errors in a wireless channel. The three-dimensional (3-D) SPIHT coder has proved its efficiency and its real-time capability in compression of video. A forward-error- correcting (FEC) channel (RCPR) code combined with a single ARQ (Automatic-repeat-request) proved to be an effective means for protecting the bitstream. In this paper, the need for ARQ is eliminated by making the 3D SPIHT bitstream more robust and resistant to channel errors. Packetization of the bitstream and the reorganization of these packets to achieve scalability in bit rate and/or resolution in addition to robustness is demonstrated and combined with channel coding to not only protect the integrity of the packets, but also allow detection of packet decoding failures, so that only the cleanly recovered packets are reconstructed. In extensive comparative tests, the reconstructed video is shown to be superior to that of MPEG- 2, with the margin of superiority growing substantially as the channel becomes noisier.