Consistent Reconstruction of the Input of an Oversampled Filter Bank From Noisy Subbands

This paper introduces a reconstruction approach for the input signal of an oversampled filter bank (OFB) when the sub-bands generated at its output are quantized and transmitted over a noisy channel. This approach exploits the redundancy introduced by the OFB and the fact that the quantization noise is bounded. A maximum-likelihood estimate of the input signal is evaluated, which only considers the vectors of quantization indexes corresponding to subband signals that could have been generated by the OFB and that are compliant with the quantization errors. When considering an OFB with an oversampling ratio of 3/2 and a transmission of quantized subbands on an AWGN channel, compared to a classical decoder, the performance gains are up to 9 dB in terms of SNR for the reconstructed signal, and 3 dB in terms of channel SNR.Comment: European Signal Processing Conference (2011

A rate control algorithm for scalable video coding

This thesis proposes a rate control (RC) algorithm for H.264/scalable video coding (SVC) specially designed for real-time variable bit rate (VBR) applications with buffer constraints. The VBR controller assumes that consecutive pictures within the same scene often exhibit similar degrees of complexity, and aims to prevent unnecessary quantization parameter (QP) fluctuations by allowing for just an incremental variation of QP with respect to that of the previous picture. In order to adapt this idea to H.264/SVC, a rate controller is located at each dependency layer (spatial or coarse grain scalability) so that each rate controller is responsible for determining the proper QP increment. Actually, one of the main contributions of the thesis is a QP increment regression model that is based on Gaussian processes. This model has been derived from some observations drawn from a discrete set of representative encoding states. Two real-time application scenarios were simulated to assess the performance of the VBR controller with respect to two well-known RC methods. The experimental results show that our proposal achieves an excellent performance in terms of quality consistency, buffer control, adjustment to the target bit rate, and computational complexity. Moreover, unlike typical RC algorithms for SVC that only satisfy the hypothetical reference decoder (HRD) constraints for the highest temporal resolution sub-stream of each dependency layer, the proposed VBR controller also delivers HRD-compliant sub-streams with lower temporal resolutions.To this end, a novel approach that uses a set of buffers (one per temporal resolution sub-stream) within a dependency layer has been built on top of the RC algorithm.The proposed approach aims to simultaneously control the buffer levels for overflow and underflow prevention, while maximizing the reconstructed video quality of the corresponding sub-streams. This in-layer multibuffer framework for rate-controlled SVC does not require additional dependency layers to deliver different HRD-compliant temporal resolutions for a given video source, thus improving the coding e ciency when compared to typical SVC encoder con gurations since, for the same target bit rate, less layers are encoded

Joint Source -Channel Video Transmission

127 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001.The effectiveness of the proposed JSCM techniques, MD optimization criterion and JSNM transport protocol is illustrated using simulations based on various video source coders and standard channel coders.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Study and optimization of a joint source-channel video-transmission system based on "SoftCast"

Des nouveaux schémas de Codage Vidéo Linéaire (CVL) ont démontré ces dernières années un potentiel élevé pour la diffusion de contenus vidéo sur des canaux de transmission sans-fil sévères. SoftCast représente le pionnier des schémas CVL. Différent des standards de transmission vidéo actuels et particulièrement utile en situation de broadcast, SoftCast est un système de codage conjoint source-canal où les pixels sont traités par des opérations linéaires successives (transformée DCT, allocation de puissance, modulation quasi-analogique) et directement transmis sans quantification ni codage (entropique ou de canal). SoftCast permet ainsi d’offrir une qualité vidéo reçue directement proportionnelle à la qualité du canal de transmission, sans aucune information de retour et tout en évitant les mécanismes d’adaptation complexes des schémas classiques. Un premier objectif de ces travaux de thèse concerne l’étude des performances de bout en bout de SoftCast. Des modèles théoriques sont ainsi proposés prenant en compte les contraintes de bande passante de l’application, l’allocation de puissance, ainsi que le type de décodeur utilisé à la réception (LLSE, ZF). Une deuxième partie basée sur une campagne de tests subjectifs concerne une étude originale de la qualité vidéo et des artefacts spécifiques associés à SoftCast. Dans une troisième partie, des méthodes de prétraitement permettant d’accroître la qualité reçue sont proposées avec un gain moyen en PSNR de l’ordre de 3 dB. Finalement, un algorithme adaptatif modifiant la taille du groupe d’images (GoP) en fonction des caractéristiques du contenu vidéo transmis est proposé. Cette solution permet d’obtenir des gains supplémentaires en PSNR de l’ordre de 1 dB.Linear video coding (LVC) schemes have recently demonstrated a high potential for delivering video content over challenging wireless channels. SoftCast represents the pioneer of the LVC schemes. Different from current video transmission standards and particularly useful in broadcast situation, SoftCast is a joint source-channel coding system where pixels are processed by successive linear operations (DCT transform, power allocation, quasi-analog modulation) and directly transmitted without quantization or coding (entropic or channel). This allows to provide a received video quality directly proportional to the transmission channel quality, without any feedback information, while avoiding the complex adaptation mechanisms of conventional schemes. A first contribution of this thesis is the study of the end-to-end performances of SoftCast. Theoretical models are thus proposed taking into account the bandwidth constraints of the application, the power allocation, as well as the type of decoder used at the reception (LLSE, ZF). Based on a subjective test campaign, a second part concern an original study of the video quality and specific artifacts related to SoftCast. In a third part, preprocessing methods are proposed to increase the received quality in terms of PSNR scores with an average gain of 3 dB. Finally, an adaptive algorithm modifying the size of the group of pictures (GoP) according to the characteristics of the transmitted video content is proposed. This solution allows to obtain about 1 dB additional gains in terms of PSNR scores