Hierarchical colour-shift-keying aided layered video streaming for the visible light downlink

Colour-shift keying (CSK) constitutes an important modulation scheme conceived for the visible light communications (VLC). The signal constellation of CSK relies on three different-color light sources invoked for information transmission. The CSK constellation has been optimized for minimizing the bit error rate, but no effort has been invested in investigating the feasibility of CSK aided unequal error protection (UEP) schemes conceived for video sources. Hence, in this treatise, we conceive a hierarchical CSK (HCSK) modulation scheme based on the traditional CSK, which is capable of generating interdependent layers of signals having different error probability, which can be readily reconfigured by changing its parameters. Furthermore, we conceived an HCSK design example for transmitting scalable video sources with the aid of a recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) code. An optimization method is conceived for enhancing the UEP and for improving the quality of the received video. Our simulation results show that the proposed optimized-UEP 16-HCSK-RSC system outperforms the traditional equal error protection scheme by ~ 1.7 dB of optical SNR at a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 37 dB, while optical SNR savings of up to 6.5 dB are attained at a lower PSNR of 36 dB

Optimized Scalable Image and Video Transmission for MIMO Wireless Channels

In this chapter, we focus on proposing new strategies to efficiently transfer a compressed image/video content through wireless links using a multiple antenna technology. The proposed solutions can be considered as application layer physical layer (APP-PHY) cross layer design methods as they involve optimizing both application and physical layers. After a wide state-of-the-art study, we present two main solutions. The first focuses on using a new precoding algorithm that takes into account the image/video content structure when assigning transmission powers. We showed that its results are better than the existing conventional precoders. Second, a link adaptation process is integrated to efficiently assign coding parameters as a function of the channel state. Simulations over a realistic channel environment show that the link adaptation activates a dynamic process that results in a good image/video reconstruction quality even if the channel is varying. Finally, we incorporated soft decoding algorithms at the receiver side, and we showed that they could induce further improvements. In fact, almost 5 dB peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) improvements are demonstrated in the case of transmission over a Rayleigh channel

Error relilient video communications using high level M-QAM. Modelling and simulation of a comparative analysis of a dual-priority M-QAM transmission system for H.264/AVC video applications over band-limited and error-phone channels.

An experimental investigation of an M level (M = 16, 64 and 256) Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) transmission system suitable for video transmission is presented. The communication system is based on layered video coding and unequal error protection to make the video bitstream robust to channel errors. An implementation is described in which H.264 video is protected unequally by partitioning the compressed data into two layers of different visual importance. The partition scheme is based on a separation of the group of pictures (GoP) in the intra-coded frame (I-frame) and predictive coded frame (P frame). This partition scheme is then applied to split the H.264-coded video bitstream and is suitable for Constant Bit Rate (CBR) transmission. Unequal error protection is based on uniform and non-uniform M-QAM constellations in conjunction with different scenarios of splitting the transmitted symbol for protection of the more important information of the video data; different constellation arrangements are proposed and evaluated to increase the capacity of the high priority layer. The performance of the transmission system is evaluated under Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading conditions. Simulation results showed that in noisy channels the decoded video can be improved by assigning a larger portion of the video data to the enhancement layer in conjunction with non-uniform constellation arrangements; in better channel conditions the quality of the received video can be improved by assigning more bits in the high priority channel and using uniform constellations. The aforementioned varying conditions can make the video transmission more successful over error-prone channels. Further techniques were developed to combat various channel impairments by considering channel coding methods suitable for layered video coding applications. It is shown that a combination of non-uniform M-QAM and forward error correction (FEC) will yield a better performance. Additionally, antenna diversity techniques are examined and introduced to the transmission system that can offer a significant improvement in the quality of service of mobile video communication systems in environments that can be modelled by a Rayleigh fading channel

Five decades of hierarchical modulation and its benefits in relay-aided networking

Hierarchical modulation (HM), which is also known as layered modulation, has been widely adopted across the telecommunication industry. Its strict backward compatibility with single-layer modems and its low complexity facilitate the seamless upgrading of wireless communication services. The specific features of HM may be conveniently exploited for improving the throughput/information-rate of the system without requiring any extra bandwidth, while its complexity may even be lower than that of the equivalent system relying on conventional modulation schemes. As a recent research trend, the potential employment of HM in the context of cooperative communications has also attracted substantial research interests. Motivated by the lower complexity and higher flexibility of HM, we provide a comprehensive survey and conclude with a range of promising future research directions. Our contribution is the conception of a new cooperative communication paradigm relying on turbo trellis-coded modulation-aided twin-layer HM-16QAM and the analytical performance investigation of a four-node cooperative communication network employing a novel opportunistic routing algorithm. The specific performance characteristics evaluated include the distribution of delay, the outage probability, the transmit power of each node, the average packet power consumption, and the system throughput. The simulation results have demonstrated that when transmitting the packets formed by layered modulated symbol streams, our opportunistic routing algorithm is capable of reducing the transmit power required for each node in the network compared with that of the system using the traditional opportunistic routing algorithm. We have also illustrated that the minimum packet power consumption of our system using our opportunistic routing algorithm is also lower than that of the system using the traditional opportunistic routing algorithm

Detect-and-forward relaying aided cooperative spatial modulation for wireless networks

A novel detect-and-forward (DeF) relaying aided cooperative SM scheme is proposed, which is capable of striking a flexible tradeoff in terms of the achievable bit error ratio (BER), complexity and unequal error protection (UEP). More specifically, SM is invoked at the source node (SN) and the information bit stream is divided into two different sets: the antenna index-bits (AI-bits) as well as the amplitude and phase modulation-bits (APM-bits). By exploiting the different importance of the AI-bits and the APM-bits in SM detection, we propose three low-complexity, yet powerful relay protocols, namely the partial, the hybrid and the hierarchical modulation (HM) based DeF relaying schemes. These schemes determine the most appropriate number of bits to be re-modulated by carefully considering their potential benefits and then assigning a specific modulation scheme for relaying the message. As a further benefit, the employment of multiple radio frequency (RF) chains and the requirement of tight inter-relay synchronization (IRS) can be avoided. Moreover, by exploiting the benefits of our low-complexity relaying protocols and our inter-element interference (IEI) model, a low-complexity maximum-likelihood (ML) detector is proposed for jointly detecting the signal received both via the source-destination (SD) and relay-destination (RD) links. Additionally, an upper bound of the BER is derived for our DeF-SM scheme. Our numerical results show that the bound is asymptotically tight in the high-SNR region and the proposed schemes provide beneficial system performance improvements compared to the conventional MIMO schemes in an identical cooperative scenario.<br/

Combining Adaptive Coding and Modulation With Hierarchical Modulation in Satcom Systems

We investigate the design of a broadcast system in order to maximize throughput. This task is usually challenging due to channel variability. Forty years ago, Cover introduced and compared two schemes: time sharing and superposition coding. Even if the second scheme was proved to be optimal for some channels, modern satellite communications systems such as DVB-SH and DVB-S2 rely mainly on a time sharing strategy to optimize the throughput. They consider hierarchical modulation, a practical implementation of superposition coding, but only for unequal error protection or backward compatibility purposes. In this article, we propose to combine time sharing and hierarchical modulation together and show how this scheme can improve the performance in terms of available rate. We introduce a hierarchical 16-APSK to boost the performance of the DVB-S2 standard. We also evaluate various strategies to group the receivers in pairs when using hierarchical modulation. Finally, we show in a realistic case, based on DVB-S2, that the combined scheme can provide throughput gains greater than 10% compared to the best time sharing strategy