Model based optimal bit allocation

Modeling of the operational rate-distortion characteristics of a signal can significantly reduce the computational complexity of an optimal bit allocation algorithm. In this report, such models are studied

Rho-domain based Rate Control Scheme for Spatial, Temporal and Quality Scalable Video Coding

International audienceRate control is a capital issue in video coding. It allows a regulation of the bitrate out from the encoder, to cope with some network transmission or quality constraints. Scalable Video Coding emerged several years ago as an answer to the growing need of application-adaptable video streams. Although the interest of scalable video coding has been confirmed by recent studies, it can not be used in practical contexts without proper rate control techniques. In this paper we present a new rate control scheme for scalable video, based on a simple yet attractive bitrate modelling framework called -domain. Our scheme performs accurate rate control on spatial, temporal and quality scalabilities, while maintaining a constant PSNR. Inter layer prediction is also handled effectively

A Rate Control Model of MPEG-4 Encoder for Video Transmission over Wireless Sensor Network

Recently, multimedia application has a lot of attention in the research community, especially when transmitting video over IEEE 802.15.4 standard. This is due to the capability of providing low complexity with low cost, but still maintaining the quality of video in term of packet received. However, transmitting video over Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) posed a new research challenges with high bandwidth demand and energy constrained of sensor nodes. MPEG-4 video codec is one of the compression techniques that used to decrease the amount of bandwidth required to meet WSN environment. Therefore, video encoding is a useful tool for rate control to control the video bit rate and maintaining the video quality especially in real-time communication applications. Video bit rate is affected by quantization scale, frame rate, and Group of Picture (GOP) size. A rate control model called enhanced Video Motion Classification based (e-ViMoC) model is proposed in this paper to produce the desired bit rate that complies to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, while at the same time preserving the video quality. The analysis has shown that, the video transmission using e-ViMoC rate control achieves enhancement in delivery ratio, energy consumption and video quality (PSNR) when compared to video transmission using uncompressed video

Rate Distortion Analysis and Bit Allocation Scheme for Wavelet Lifting-Based Multiview Image Coding

This paper studies the distortion and the model-based bit allocation scheme of wavelet lifting-based multiview image coding. Redundancies among image views are removed by disparity-compensated wavelet lifting (DCWL). The distortion prediction of the low-pass and high-pass subbands of each image view from the DCWL process is analyzed. The derived distortion is used with different rate distortion models in the bit allocation of multiview images. Rate distortion models including power model, exponential model, and the proposed combining the power and exponential models are studied. The proposed rate distortion model exploits the accuracy of both power and exponential models in a wide range of target bit rates. Then, low-pass and high-pass subbands are compressed by SPIHT (Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees) with a bit allocation solution. We verify the derived distortion and the bit allocation with several sets of multiview images. The results show that the bit allocation solution based on the derived distortion and our bit allocation scheme provide closer results to those of the exhaustive search method in both allocated bits and peak-signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). It also outperforms the uniform bit allocation and uniform bit allocation with normalized energy in the order of 1.7–2 and 0.3–1.4 dB, respectively

Reliable multimedia transmission over wireless sensor network

Nowadays, video streaming application is widely used in wired as well as wireless environment. Extending this application into Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) for IEEE 802.15.4 network has attracted lots of attention in the research community. Reliable data transmission is one of the most important requirements in WSN especially for multimedia application. Moreover, multimedia application requires high bandwidth and consumes large memory size in order to send video data that requires small end-to-end (ETE) delay. To overcome this problem, rate control serves as an important technique to control the bit rate of encoded video for transmission over a channel of limited bandwidth and low data rate which is 250kbps with small Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size of 127 bytes. Therefore, a rate control model called enhanced Video Motion Classification based (e-ViMoC) model using an optimal combination of parameter setting is proposed in this thesis. Another challenging task to maintain the video quality is the design of an enhanced transport protocol. Standard transport protocols cannot be directly applied in WSN specifically, but some modifications are required. Therefore, to achieve high reliability of video transmission, the advantages of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) features are applied to the proposed transport protocol called Lightweight Reliable Transport Protocol (LRTP) to tailor to the low data rate requirement of WSN. Besides, priority queue scheme is adopted to reduce the end-to-end delay while maintaining the reliability and energy efficiency. Evalvid simulation tool and exhaustive search method are used to determine optimal combination of quantization scale (q), frame rate (r) and Group of Picture (GOP) size (l) values to control the bit rate at the video encoder. The model of e-ViMoC is verified both with simulation and experimental work. The proposed transport protocol has been successfully studied and verified through simulation using Network Simulator 2 (NS-2). From the simulation results, the proposed e-ViMoC encoded video enhances the Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) by 5.14%, reduces the energy consumed by 16.37%, improves the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) by 4.37% and reduces the ETE delay by 23.69% in average, compared to non-optimized encoded video. The tested experiment experiences slightly different result where the PDR is 6% lower than simulation results. Meanwhile, the combination of e-ViMoC and LRTP outperforms the standard transport protocol by average improvement of 142.9% for PDR, average reduction of 8.87% for energy consumption, average improvement of 4.1% for PSNR, and average reduction of 19.38% for ETE delay. Thus, the simulation results show that the combination of proposed e-ViMoC and LRTP provides better reliability performance in terms of the PDR while simultaneously improves the energy efficiency, the video quality and ETE delay

On backoff mechanisms for wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Since their emergence within the past decade, which has seen wireless networks being adapted to enable mobility, wireless networks have become increasingly popular in the world of computer research. A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes dynamically forming a temporary network without the use of any existing network infrastructure. MANETs have received significant attention in recent years due to their easiness to setup and to their potential applications in many domains. Such networks can be useful in situations where there is not enough time or resource to configure a wired network. Ad hoc networks are also used in military operations where the units are randomly mobile and a central unit cannot be used for synchronization. The shared media used by wireless networks, grant exclusive rights for a node to transmit a packet. Access to this media is controlled by the Media Access Control (MAC) protocol. The Backoff mechanism is a basic part of a MAC protocol. Since only one transmitting node uses the channel at any given time, the MAC protocol must suspend other nodes while the media is busy. In order to decide the length of node suspension, a backoff mechanism is installed in the MAC protocol. The choice of backoff mechanism should consider generating backoff timers which allow adequate time for current transmissions to finish and, at the same time, avoid unneeded idle time that leads to redundant delay in the network. Moreover, the backoff mechanism used should decide the suitable action to be taken in case of repeated failures of a node to attain the media. Further, the mechanism decides the action needed after a successful transmission since this action affects the next time backoff is needed. The Binary exponential Backoff (BEB) is the backoff mechanisms that MANETs have adopted from Ethernet. Similar to Ethernet, MANETs use a shared media. Therefore, the standard MAC protocol used for MANETs uses the standard BEB backoff algorithms. The first part of this work, presented as Chapter 3 of this thesis, studies the effects of changing the backoff behaviour upon a transmission failure or after a successful transmission. The investigation has revealed that using different behaviours directly affects both network throughput and average packet delay. This result indicates that BEB is not the optimal backoff mechanism for MANETs. Up until this research started, no research activity has focused on studying the major parameters of MANETs. These parameters are the speed at which nodes travel inside the network area, the number of nodes in the network and the data size generated per second. These are referred to as mobility speed, network size and traffic load respectively. The investigation has reported that changes made to these parameters values have a major effect on network performance. Existing research on backoff algorithms for MANETs mainly focuses on using external information, as opposed to information available from within the node, to decide the length of backoff timers. Such information includes network traffic load, transmission failures of other nodes and the total number of nodes in the network. In a mobile network, acquiring such information is not feasible at all times. To address this point, the second part of this thesis proposes new backoff algorithms to use with MANETs. These algorithms use internal information only to make their decisions. This part has revealed that it is possible to achieve higher network throughput and less average packet delay under different values of the parameters mentioned above without the use of any external information. This work proposes two new backoff algorithms. The Optimistic Linear-Exponential Backoff, (OLEB), and the Pessimistic Linear-Exponential Backoff (PLEB). In OLEB, the exponential backoff is combined with linear increment behaviour in order to reduce redundant long backoff times, during which the media is available and the node is still on backoff status, by implementing less dramatic increments in the early backoff stages. PLEB is also a combination of exponential and linear increment behaviours. However, the order in which linear and exponential behaviours are used is the reverse of that in OLEB. The two algorithms have been compared with existing work. Results of this research report that PLEB achieves higher network throughput for large numbers of nodes (e.g. 50 nodes and over). Moreover, PLEB achieves higher network throughput with low mobility speed. As for average packet delay, PLEB significantly improves average packet delay for large network sizes especially when combined with high traffic rate and mobility speed. On the other hand, the measurements of network throughput have revealed that for small networks of 10 nodes, OLEB has higher throughput than existing work at high traffic rates. For a medium network size of 50 nodes, OLEB also achieves higher throughput. Finally, at a large network size of 100 nodes, OLEB reaches higher throughput at low mobility speed. Moreover, OLEB produces lower average packet delay than the existing algorithms at low mobility speed for a network size of 50 nodes. Finally, this work has studied the effect of choosing the behaviour changing point between linear and exponential increments in OLEB and PLEB. Results have shown that increasing the number of times in which the linear increment is used increases network throughput. Moreover, using larger linear increments increase network throughput