Enabling error-resilient internet broadcasting using motion compensated spatial partitioning and packet FEC for the dirac video codec

Video transmission over the wireless or wired network require protection from channel errors since compressed video bitstreams are very sensitive to transmission errors because of the use of predictive coding and variable length coding. In this paper, a simple, low complexity and patent free error-resilient coding is proposed. It is based upon the idea of using spatial partitioning on the motion compensated residual frame without employing the transform coefficient coding. The proposed scheme is intended for open source Dirac video codec in order to enable the codec to be used for Internet broadcasting. By partitioning the wavelet transform coefficients of the motion compensated residual frame into groups and independently processing each group using arithmetic coding and Forward Error Correction (FEC), robustness to transmission errors over the packet erasure wired network could be achieved. Using the Rate Compatibles Punctured Code (RCPC) and Turbo Code (TC) as the FEC, the proposed technique provides gracefully decreasing perceptual quality over packet loss rates up to 30%. The PSNR performance is much better when compared with the conventional data partitioning only methods. Simulation results show that the use of multiple partitioning of wavelet coefficient in Dirac can achieve up to 8 dB PSNR gain over its existing un-partitioned method

Mobile Audiovisual Terminal: System Design and Subjective Testing in DECT and UMTS networks

It is anticipated that there will shortly be a requirement for multimedia terminals that operate via mobile communications systems. This paper presents a functional specification for such a terminal operating at 32 kb/s in a digital European cordless telecommunications (DECT) and universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) radio network. A terminal has been built, based on a PC with digital signal processor (DSP) boards for audio and video coding and decoding. Speech coding is by a phonetically driven code-excited linear prediction (CELP) speech coder and video coding by a block-oriented hybrid discrete cosine transform (DCT) coder. Separate channel coding is provided for the audio and video data. The paper describes the techniques used for audio and video coding, channel coding, and synchronization. Methods of subjective testing in a DECT network and in a UMTS network are also described. These consisted of subjective tests of first impressions of the mobile audio–visual terminal (MAVT) quality, interactive tests, and the completion of an exit questionnaire. The test results showed that the quality of the audio was sufficiently good for comprehension and the video was sufficiently good for following and repeating simple mechanical tasks. However, the quality of the MAVT was not good enough for general use where high-quality audio and video was needed, especially when transmission was in a noisy radio environment

LAR Image transmission over fading channels: a hierarchical protection solution

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to present an efficient scheme to transmit a compressed digital image over a non frequency selective Rayleigh fading channel. The proposed scheme is based on the Locally Adaptive Resolution (LAR) algorithm, and the Reed-Solomon error correcting code is used to protect the data against the channel errors. In order to optimize the protection rate and ensure better protection we introduce an Unequal Error Protection (UEP) strategy, where we take the hierarchy of the information into account. The digital communication system also includes appropriate interleaving and differential modulation. Simulation results clearly show that our scheme presents an efficient solution for image transmission over wireless channels, and provides a high quality of service, outperforming the JPWL scheme in high bit error rate conditions

On the Efficient Broadcasting of Heterogeneous Services over Band-Limited Channels: Unequal Power Allocation for Wavelet Packet Division Multiplexing

Multiple transmission of heterogeneous services is a central aspect of broadcasting technology. Often, in this framework, the design of efficient communication systems is complicated by stringent bandwidth constraint. In wavelet packet division multiplexing (WPDM), the message signals are waveform coded onto wavelet packet basis functions. The overlapping nature of such waveforms in both time and frequency allows improving the performance over the commonly used FDM and TDM schemes, while their orthogonality properties permit to extract the message signals by a simple correlator receiver. Furthermore, the scalable structure of WPDM makes it suitable for broadcasting heterogeneous services. This work investigates unequal error protection (UEP) of data which exhibit different sensitivities to channel errors to improve the performance of WPDM for transmission over band-limited channels. To cope with bandwidth constraint, an appropriate distribution of power among waveforms is proposed which is driven by the channel error sensitivities of the carried message signals in case of Gaussian noise. We address this problem by means of the genetic algorithms (GAs), which allow flexible suboptimal solution with reduced complexity. The mean square error (MSE) between the original and the decoded message, which has a strong correlation with subjective perception, is used as an optimization criterion

A 60 GHz Wireless Network for Enabling Uncompressed Video Communication

Uncompressed high-definition video streaming over wireless personal area networks is a challenging problem because of the high data rate requirement and channel variations. With the advances in RF technology and the huge bandwidth available worldwide in the 57–66 GHz millimeter-wave unlicensed spectrum, mmWave WPANs that can support multigigabit transmission are being developed. However, compared to low-frequency signals (2.4 or 5 GHz), mmWave signals are more fragile; indeed, the propagation losses are significantly higher. In this article we present an mmWave system for supporting uncompressed HD video up to 3 Gb/s. The system includes various efficient error protection and concealment schemes that exploit unequal error resilience properties of uncompressed video. Some of them have been adopted in the emerging 60 GHz WPAN standards such as WirelessHD, ECMA TC48, and IEEE 802.15.3c. Simulations using real uncompressed HD images indicate that the proposed mmWave system can maintain, under poor channel conditions, good average peak-signal-to-noise-ratio and low video quality metric scores

Upper bounds for packings of spheres of several radii

We give theorems that can be used to upper bound the densities of packings of different spherical caps in the unit sphere and of translates of different convex bodies in Euclidean space. These theorems extend the linear programming bounds for packings of spherical caps and of convex bodies through the use of semidefinite programming. We perform explicit computations, obtaining new bounds for packings of spherical caps of two different sizes and for binary sphere packings. We also slightly improve bounds for the classical problem of packing identical spheres.Comment: 31 page

Joint source-channel coding with feedback

This paper quantifies the fundamental limits of variable-length transmission of a general (possibly analog) source over a memoryless channel with noiseless feedback, under a distortion constraint. We consider excess distortion, average distortion and guaranteed distortion ($d$-semifaithful codes). In contrast to the asymptotic fundamental limit, a general conclusion is that allowing variable-length codes and feedback leads to a sizable improvement in the fundamental delay-distortion tradeoff. In addition, we investigate the minimum energy required to reproduce $k$ source samples with a given fidelity after transmission over a memoryless Gaussian channel, and we show that the required minimum energy is reduced with feedback and an average (rather than maximal) power constraint.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor