Damaged watermarks detection in frequency domain as a primary method for video concealment

This paper deals with video transmission over lossy communication networks. The main idea is to develop video concealment method for information losses and errors correction. At the beginning, three main groups of video concealment methods, divided by encoder/decoder collaboration, are briefly described. The modified algorithm based on the detection and filtration of damaged watermark blocks encapsulated to the transmitted video was developed. Finally, the efficiency of developed algorithm is presented in experimental part of this paper

Resilient Digital Video Transmission over Wireless Channels using Pixel-Level Artefact Detection Mechanisms

Recent advances in communications and video coding technology have brought multimedia communications into everyday life, where a variety of services and applications are being integrated within different devices such that multimedia content is provided everywhere and on any device. H.264/AVC provides a major advance on preceding video coding standards obtaining as much as twice the coding efficiency over these standards (Richardson I.E.G., 2003, Wiegand T. & Sullivan G.J., 2007). Furthermore, this new codec inserts video related information within network abstraction layer units (NALUs), which facilitates the transmission of H.264/AVC coded sequences over a variety of network environments (Stockhammer, T. & Hannuksela M.M., 2005) making it applicable for a broad range of applications such as TV broadcasting, mobile TV, video-on-demand, digital media storage, high definition TV, multimedia streaming and conversational applications. Real-time wireless conversational and broadcast applications are particularly challenging as, in general, reliable delivery cannot be guaranteed (Stockhammer, T. & Hannuksela M.M., 2005). The H.264/AVC standard specifies several error resilient strategies to minimise the effect of transmission errors on the perceptual quality of the reconstructed video sequences. However, these methods assume a packet-loss scenario where the receiver discards and conceals all the video information contained within a corrupted NALU packet. This implies that the error resilient methods adopted by the standard operate at a lower bound since not all the information contained within a corrupted NALU packet is un-utilizable (Stockhammer, T. et al., 2003).peer-reviewe

Video modeling via implicit motion representations

Video modeling refers to the development of analytical representations for explaining the intensity distribution in video signals. Based on the analytical representation, we can develop algorithms for accomplishing particular video-related tasks. Therefore video modeling provides us a foundation to bridge video data and related-tasks. Although there are many video models proposed in the past decades, the rise of new applications calls for more efficient and accurate video modeling approaches.;Most existing video modeling approaches are based on explicit motion representations, where motion information is explicitly expressed by correspondence-based representations (i.e., motion velocity or displacement). Although it is conceptually simple, the limitations of those representations and the suboptimum of motion estimation techniques can degrade such video modeling approaches, especially for handling complex motion or non-ideal observation video data. In this thesis, we propose to investigate video modeling without explicit motion representation. Motion information is implicitly embedded into the spatio-temporal dependency among pixels or patches instead of being explicitly described by motion vectors.;Firstly, we propose a parametric model based on a spatio-temporal adaptive localized learning (STALL). We formulate video modeling as a linear regression problem, in which motion information is embedded within the regression coefficients. The coefficients are adaptively learned within a local space-time window based on LMMSE criterion. Incorporating a spatio-temporal resampling and a Bayesian fusion scheme, we can enhance the modeling capability of STALL on more general videos. Under the framework of STALL, we can develop video processing algorithms for a variety of applications by adjusting model parameters (i.e., the size and topology of model support and training window). We apply STALL on three video processing problems. The simulation results show that motion information can be efficiently exploited by our implicit motion representation and the resampling and fusion do help to enhance the modeling capability of STALL.;Secondly, we propose a nonparametric video modeling approach, which is not dependent on explicit motion estimation. Assuming the video sequence is composed of many overlapping space-time patches, we propose to embed motion-related information into the relationships among video patches and develop a generic sparsity-based prior for typical video sequences. First, we extend block matching to more general kNN-based patch clustering, which provides an implicit and distributed representation for motion information. We propose to enforce the sparsity constraint on a higher-dimensional data array signal, which is generated by packing the patches in the similar patch set. Then we solve the inference problem by updating the kNN array and the wanted signal iteratively. Finally, we present a Bayesian fusion approach to fuse multiple-hypothesis inferences. Simulation results in video error concealment, denoising, and deartifacting are reported to demonstrate its modeling capability.;Finally, we summarize the proposed two video modeling approaches. We also point out the perspectives of implicit motion representations in applications ranging from low to high level problems

Construction de mosaïques de super-résolution à partir de la vidéo de basse résolution. Application au résumé vidéo et la dissimulation d'erreurs de transmission.

La numérisation des vidéos existantes ainsi que le développement explosif des services multimédia par des réseaux comme la diffusion de la télévision numérique ou les communications mobiles ont produit une énorme quantité de vidéos compressées. Ceci nécessite des outils d’indexation et de navigation efficaces, mais une indexation avant l’encodage n’est pas habituelle. L’approche courante est le décodage complet des ces vidéos pour ensuite créer des indexes. Ceci est très coûteux et par conséquent non réalisable en temps réel. De plus, des informations importantes comme le mouvement, perdus lors du décodage, sont reestimées bien que déjà présentes dans le flux comprimé. Notre but dans cette thèse est donc la réutilisation des données déjà présents dans le flux comprimé MPEG pour l’indexation et la navigation rapide. Plus précisément, nous extrayons des coefficients DC et des vecteurs de mouvement. Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous sommes en particulier intéressés à la construction de mosaïques à partir des images DC extraites des images I. Une mosaïque est construite par recalage et fusion de toutes les images d’une séquence vidéo dans un seul système de coordonnées. Ce dernier est en général aligné avec une des images de la séquence : l’image de référence. Il en résulte une seule image qui donne une vue globale de la séquence. Ainsi, nous proposons dans cette thèse un système complet pour la construction des mosaïques à partir du flux MPEG-1/2 qui tient compte de différentes problèmes apparaissant dans des séquences vidéo réeles, comme par exemple des objets en mouvment ou des changements d’éclairage. Une tâche essentielle pour la construction d’une mosaïque est l’estimation de mouvement entre chaque image de la séquence et l’image de référence. Notre méthode se base sur une estimation robuste du mouvement global de la caméra à partir des vecteurs de mouvement des images P. Cependant, le mouvement global de la caméra estimé pour une image P peut être incorrect car il dépend fortement de la précision des vecteurs encodés. Nous détectons les images P concernées en tenant compte des coefficients DC de l’erreur encodée associée et proposons deux méthodes pour corriger ces mouvements. Unemosaïque construite à partir des images DC a une résolution très faible et souffre des effets d’aliasing dus à la nature des images DC. Afin d’augmenter sa résolution et d’améliorer sa qualité visuelle, nous appliquons une méthode de super-résolution basée sur des rétro-projections itératives. Les méthodes de super-résolution sont également basées sur le recalage et la fusion des images d’une séquence vidéo, mais sont accompagnées d’une restauration d’image. Dans ce cadre, nous avons développé une nouvelleméthode d’estimation de flou dû au mouvement de la caméra ainsi qu’une méthode correspondante de restauration spectrale. La restauration spectrale permet de traiter le flou globalement, mais, dans le cas des obvi jets ayant un mouvement indépendant du mouvement de la caméra, des flous locaux apparaissent. C’est pourquoi, nous proposons un nouvel algorithme de super-résolution dérivé de la restauration spatiale itérative de Van Cittert et Jansson permettant de restaurer des flous locaux. En nous basant sur une segmentation d’objets en mouvement, nous restaurons séparément lamosaïque d’arrière-plan et les objets de l’avant-plan. Nous avons adapté notre méthode d’estimation de flou en conséquence. Dans une premier temps, nous avons appliqué notre méthode à la construction de résumé vidéo avec pour l’objectif la navigation rapide par mosaïques dans la vidéo compressée. Puis, nous établissions comment la réutilisation des résultats intermédiaires sert à d’autres tâches d’indexation, notamment à la détection de changement de plan pour les images I et à la caractérisation dumouvement de la caméra. Enfin, nous avons exploré le domaine de la récupération des erreurs de transmission. Notre approche consiste en construire une mosaïque lors du décodage d’un plan ; en cas de perte de données, l’information manquante peut être dissimulée grace à cette mosaïque

Multimedia over wireless ip networks:distortion estimation and applications.

2006/2007This thesis deals with multimedia communication over unreliable and resource constrained IP-based packet-switched networks. The focus is on estimating, evaluating and enhancing the quality of streaming media services with particular regard to video services. The original contributions of this study involve mainly the development of three video distortion estimation techniques and the successive definition of some application scenarios used to demonstrate the benefits obtained applying such algorithms. The material presented in this dissertation is the result of the studies performed within the Telecommunication Group of the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Trieste during the course of Doctorate in Information Engineering. In recent years multimedia communication over wired and wireless packet based networks is exploding. Applications such as BitTorrent, music file sharing, multimedia podcasting are the main source of all traffic on the Internet. Internet radio for example is now evolving into peer to peer television such as CoolStreaming. Moreover, web sites such as YouTube have made publishing videos on demand available to anyone owning a home video camera. Another challenge in the multimedia evolution is inside the house where videos are distributed over local WiFi networks to many end devices around the house. More in general we are assisting an all media over IP revolution, with radio, television, telephony and stored media all being delivered over IP wired and wireless networks. All the presented applications require an extreme high bandwidth and often a low delay especially for interactive applications. Unfortunately the Internet and the wireless networks provide only limited support for multimedia applications. Variations in network conditions can have considerable consequences for real-time multimedia applications and can lead to unsatisfactory user experience. In fact, multimedia applications are usually delay sensitive, bandwidth intense and loss tolerant applications. In order to overcame this limitations, efficient adaptation mechanism must be derived to bridge the application requirements with the transport medium characteristics. Several approaches have been proposed for the robust transmission of multimedia packets; they range from source coding solutions to the addition of redundancy with forward error correction and retransmissions. Additionally, other techniques are based on developing efficient QoS architectures at the network layer or at the data link layer where routers or specialized devices apply different forwarding behaviors to packets depending on the value of some field in the packet header. Using such network architecture, video packets are assigned to classes, in order to obtain a different treatment by the network; in particular, packets assigned to the most privileged class will be lost with a very small probability, while packets belonging to the lowest priority class will experience the traditional best–effort service. But the key problem in this solution is how to assign optimally video packets to the network classes. One way to perform the assignment is to proceed on a packet-by-packet basis, to exploit the highly non-uniform distortion impact of compressed video. Working on the distortion impact of each individual video packet has been shown in recent years to deliver better performance than relying on the average error sensitivity of each bitstream element. The distortion impact of a video packet can be expressed as the distortion that would be introduced at the receiver by its loss, taking into account the effects of both error concealment and error propagation due to temporal prediction. The estimation algorithms proposed in this dissertation are able to reproduce accurately the distortion envelope deriving from multiple losses on the network and the computational complexity required is negligible in respect to those proposed in literature. Several tests are run to validate the distortion estimation algorithms and to measure the influence of the main encoder-decoder settings. Different application scenarios are described and compared to demonstrate the benefits obtained using the developed algorithms. The packet distortion impact is inserted in each video packet and transmitted over the network where specialized agents manage the video packets using the distortion information. In particular, the internal structure of the agents is modified to allow video packets prioritization using primarily the distortion impact estimated by the transmitter. The results obtained will show that, in each scenario, a significant improvement may be obtained with respect to traditional transmission policies. The thesis is organized in two parts. The first provides the background material and represents the basics of the following arguments, while the other is dedicated to the original results obtained during the research activity. Referring to the first part in the first chapter it summarized an introduction to the principles and challenges for the multimedia transmission over packet networks. The most recent advances in video compression technologies are detailed in the second chapter, focusing in particular on aspects that involve the resilience to packet loss impairments. The third chapter deals with the main techniques adopted to protect the multimedia flow for mitigating the packet loss corruption due to channel failures. The fourth chapter introduces the more recent advances in network adaptive media transport detailing the techniques that prioritize the video packet flow. The fifth chapter makes a literature review of the existing distortion estimation techniques focusing mainly on their limitation aspects. The second part of the thesis describes the original results obtained in the modelling of the video distortion deriving from the transmission over an error prone network. In particular, the sixth chapter presents three new distortion estimation algorithms able to estimate the video quality and shows the results of some validation tests performed to measure the accuracy of the employed algorithms. The seventh chapter proposes different application scenarios where the developed algorithms may be used to enhance quickly the video quality at the end user side. Finally, the eight chapter summarizes the thesis contributions and remarks the most important conclusions. It also derives some directions for future improvements. The intent of the entire work presented hereafter is to develop some video distortion estimation algorithms able to predict the user quality deriving from the loss on the network as well as providing the results of some useful applications able to enhance the user experience during a video streaming session.Questa tesi di dottorato affronta il problema della trasmissione efficiente di contenuti multimediali su reti a pacchetto inaffidabili e con limitate risorse di banda. L’obiettivo è quello di ideare alcuni algoritmi in grado di predire l’andamento della qualità del video ricevuto da un utente e successivamente ideare alcune tecniche in grado di migliorare l’esperienza dell’utente finale nella fruizione dei servizi video. In particolare i contributi originali del presente lavoro riguardano lo sviluppo di algoritmi per la stima della distorsione e l’ideazione di alcuni scenari applicativi in molto frequenti dove poter valutare i benefici ottenibili applicando gli algoritmi di stima. I contributi presentati in questa tesi di dottorato sono il risultato degli studi compiuti con il gruppo di Telecomunicazioni del Dipartimento di Elettrotecnica Elettronica ed Informatica (DEEI) dell’Università degli Studi di Trieste durante il corso di dottorato in Ingegneria dell’Informazione. Negli ultimi anni la multimedialità, diffusa sulle reti cablate e wireless, sta diventando parte integrante del modo di utilizzare la rete diventando di fatto il fenomeno più imponente. Applicazioni come BitTorrent, la condivisione di file musicali e multimediali e il podcasting ad esempio costituiscono una parte significativa del traffico attuale su Internet. Quelle che negli ultimi anni erano le prime radio che trsmettevano sulla rete oggi si stanno evolvendo nei sistemi peer to peer per più avanzati per la diffusione della TV via web come CoolStreaming. Inoltre siti web come YouTube hanno costruito il loro business sulla memorizzazione/ distribuzione di video creati da chiunque abbia una semplice video camera. Un’altra caratteristica dell’imponente rivoluzione multimediale a cui stiamo assistendo è la diffusione dei video anche all’interno delle case dove i contenuti multimediali vengono distribuiti mediante delle reti wireless locali tra i vari dispositivi finali. Tutt’oggi è in corso una rivoluzione della multimedialità sulle reti IP con le radio, i televisioni, la telefonia e tutti i video che devono essere distribuiti sulle reti cablate e wireless verso utenti eterogenei. In generale la gran parte delle applicazioni multimediali richiedono una banda elevata e dei ritardi molto contenuti specialmente se le applicazioni sono di tipo interattivo. Sfortunatamente le reti wireless e Internet più in generale sono in grado di fornire un supporto limitato alle applicazioni multimediali. La variabilità di banda, di ritardo e nella perdita possono avere conseguenze gravi sulla qualità con cui viene ricevuto il video e questo può portare a una parziale insoddisfazione o addirittura alla rinuncia della fruizione da parte dell’utente finale. Le applicazioni multimediali sono spesso sensibili al ritardo e con requisiti di banda molto stringenti ma di fatto rimango tolleranti nei confronti delle perdite che possono avvenire durante la trasmissione. Al fine di superare le limitazioni è necessario sviluppare dei meccanismi di adattamento in grado di fare da ponte fra i requisiti delle applicazioni multimediali e le caratteristiche offerte dal livello di trasporto. Diversi approcci sono stati proposti in passato in letteratura per migliorare la trasmissione dei pacchetti riducendo le perdite; gli approcci variano dalle soluzioni di compressione efficiente all’aggiunta di ridondanza con tecniche di forward error correction e ritrasmissioni. Altre tecniche si basano sulla creazione di architetture di rete complesse in grado di garantire la QoS a livello rete dove router oppure altri agenti specializzati applicano diverse politiche di gestione del traffico in base ai valori contenuti nei campi dei pacchetti. Mediante queste architetture il traffico video viene marcato con delle classi di priorità al fine di creare una differenziazione nel traffico a livello rete; in particolare i pacchetti con i privilegi maggiori vengono assegnati alle classi di priorità più elevate e verranno persi con probabilità molto bassa mentre i pacchetti appartenenti alle classi di priorità inferiori saranno trattati alla stregua dei servizi di tipo best-effort. Uno dei principali problemi di questa soluzione riguarda come assegnare in maniera ottimale i singoli pacchetti video alle diverse classi di priorità. Un modo per effettuare questa classificazione è quello di procedere assegnando i pacchetti alle varie classi sulla base dell’importanza che ogni pacchetto ha sulla qualità finale. E’ stato dimostrato in numerosi lavori recenti che utilizzando come meccanismo per l’adattamento l’impatto sulla distorsione finale, porta significativi miglioramenti rispetto alle tecniche che utilizzano come parametro la sensibilità media del flusso nei confronti delle perdite. L’impatto che ogni pacchetto ha sulla qualità può essere espresso come la distorsione che viene introdotta al ricevitore se il pacchetto viene perso tenendo in considerazione gli effetti del recupero (error concealment) e la propagazione dell’errore (error propagation) caratteristica dei più recenti codificatori video. Gli algoritmi di stima della distorsione proposti in questa tesi sono in grado di riprodurre in maniera accurata l’inviluppo della distorsione derivante sia da perdite isolate che da perdite multiple nella rete con una complessità computazionale minima se confrontata con le più recenti tecniche di stima. Numerose prove sono stati effettuate al fine di validare gli algoritmi di stima e misurare l’influenza dei principali parametri di codifica e di decodifica. Al fine di enfatizzare i benefici ottenuti applicando gli algoritmi di stima della distorsione, durante la tesi verranno presentati alcuni scenari applicativi dove l’applicazione degli algoritmi proposti migliora sensibilmente la qualità finale percepita dagli utenti. Tali scenari verranno descritti, implementati e accuratamente valutati. In particolare, la distorsione stimata dal trasmettitore verrà incapsulata nei pacchetti video e, trasmessa nella rete dove agenti specializzati potranno agevolmente estrarla e utilizzarla come meccanismo rate-distortion per privilegiare alcuni pacchetti a discapito di altri. In particolare la struttura interna di un agente (un router) verrà modificata al fine di consentire la differenziazione del traffico utilizzando l’informazione dell’impatto che ogni pacchetto ha sulla qualità finale. I risultati ottenuti anche in termini di ridotta complessità computazionale in ogni scenario applicativo proposto mettono in luce i benefici derivanti dall’implementazione degli algoritmi di stima. La presenti tesi di dottorato è strutturata in due parti principali; la prima fornisce il background e rappresenta la base per tutti gli argomenti trattati nel seguito mentre la seconda parte è dedicata ai contributi originali e ai risultati ottenuti durante l’intera attività di ricerca. In riferimento alla prima parte in particolare un’introduzione ai principi e alle opportunità offerte dalla diffusione dei servizi multimediali sulle reti a pacchetto viene esposta nel primo capitolo. I progressi più recenti nelle tecniche di compressione video vengono esposti dettagliatamente nel secondo capitolo che si focalizza in particolare solo sugli aspetti che riguardano le tecniche per la mitigazione delle perdite. Il terzo capitolo introduce le principali tecniche per proteggere i flussi multimediali e ridurre le perdite causate dai fenomeni caratteristici del canale. Il quarto capitolo descrive i recenti avanzamenti nelle tecniche di network adaptive media transport illustrando i principali metodi utilizzati per differenziare il traffico video. Il quinto capitolo analizza i principali contributi nella letteratura sulle tecniche di stima della distorsione e si focalizza in particolare sulle limitazioni dei metodi attuali. La seconda parte della tesi descrive i contributi originali ottenuti nella modellizzazione della distorsione video derivante dalla trasmissione sulle reti con perdite. In particolare il sesto capitolo presenta tre nuovi algoritmi in grado di riprodurre fedelmente l’inviluppo della distorsione video. I numerosi test e risultati verranno proposti al fine di validare gli algoritmi e misurare l’accuratezza nella stima. Il settimo capitolo propone diversi scenari applicativi dove gli algoritmi sviluppati possono essere utilizzati per migliorare in maniera significativa la qualità percepita dall’utente finale. Infine l’ottavo capitolo sintetizza l’intero lavoro svolto e i principali risultati ottenuti. Nello stesso capitolo vengono inoltre descritti gli sviluppi futuri dell’attività di ricerca. L’obiettivo dell’intero lavoro presentato è quello di mostrare i benefici derivanti dall’utilizzo di nuovi algoritmi per la stima della distorsione e di fornire alcuni scenari applicativi di utilizzo.XIX Ciclo197

Algoritmos para retransmissão de vídeo H.264 em redes sobrepostas

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação, Florianópolis, 2010Com a popularização da banda larga os usuários domésticos passaram a consumir diversos serviços multimídia pela Internet: Telefonia IP, rádio, vídeo sob demanda. Por enquanto, em se tratando de vídeos, os principais serviços disponíveis na rede não oferecem as características presentes na TV, ou seja, não são ao vivo e necessitam de buferização, gerando portanto atraso. Eles também requerem uma grande largura de banda nos servidores, linearmente crescente com número de clientes. Através das redes sobrepostas (orientadas a dados) pode-se remediar a falta de suporte ao IP Multicast, que seria uma solução para essa classe de aplicação, sem os problemas com a largura de banda. Entretanto tais redes não especificam o tratamento das perdas de pacotes, de modo que ou estas são ignoradas, ou são recuperadas em qualquer situação. Este trabalho faz uma análise dos recursos do padrão de compressão de vídeo digital H.264 e apresenta critérios claros para retransmissão a partir dos diferentes tipos de codificação presentes nesse formato. Estabelece prioridades a partir desses tipos e define três algoritmos para a escolha de partes perdidas para a recuperação. Um deles (SeRViSO) observa uma meta fixa levando em conta as prioridades, em termos de quanto dos dados deve retransmitir. O segundo (Adaptativo) usa uma meta variável, buscando inicialmente a retransmissão de todas as partes perdidas de um segmento, mas a cada vez que a retransmissão de partes do mesmo segmento for solicitada a meta diminui. O último algoritmo ((m,k)-Firm) também tem metas fixas, mas uma para cada tipo de codificação, e não tolera perdas de partes com o mesmo tipo de codificação muito próximas. Todos eles são definidos dentro do escopo da proposta da rede sobreposta SeRViSO. As vantagens de um tratamento claro das perdas são óbvias: maior adaptação às condições da rede e perdas menos importantes, ou seja, que não redundem em propagação de erro por muitos quadros. Os resultados dos testes com um protótipo confirmam isso, de forma que a perda de partes do tipo mais importante foi consistentemente menor que a perda média

Intelligent Side Information Generation in Distributed Video Coding

Distributed video coding (DVC) reverses the traditional coding paradigm of complex encoders allied with basic decoding to one where the computational cost is largely incurred by the decoder. This is attractive as the proven theoretical work of Wyner-Ziv (WZ) and Slepian-Wolf (SW) shows that the performance by such a system should be exactly the same as a conventional coder. Despite the solid theoretical foundations, current DVC qualitative and quantitative performance falls short of existing conventional coders and there remain crucial limitations. A key constraint governing DVC performance is the quality of side information (SI), a coarse representation of original video frames which are not available at the decoder. Techniques to generate SI have usually been based on linear motion compensated temporal interpolation (LMCTI), though these do not always produce satisfactory SI quality, especially in sequences exhibiting non-linear motion. This thesis presents an intelligent higher order piecewise trajectory temporal interpolation (HOPTTI) framework for SI generation with original contributions that afford better SI quality in comparison to existing LMCTI-based approaches. The major elements in this framework are: (i) a cubic trajectory interpolation algorithm model that significantly improves the accuracy of motion vector estimations; (ii) an adaptive overlapped block motion compensation (AOBMC) model which reduces both blocking and overlapping artefacts in the SI emanating from the block matching algorithm; (iii) the development of an empirical mode switching algorithm; and (iv) an intelligent switching mechanism to construct SI by automatically selecting the best macroblock from the intermediate SI generated by HOPTTI and AOBMC algorithms. Rigorous analysis and evaluation confirms that significant quantitative and perceptual improvements in SI quality are achieved with the new framework

Multi-scale edge-guided image gap restoration

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University London.The focus of this research work is the estimation of gaps (missing blocks) in digital images. To progress the research two main issues were identified as (1) the appropriate domains for image gap restoration and (2) the methodologies for gap interpolation. Multi-scale transforms provide an appropriate framework for gap restoration. The main advantages are transformations into a set of frequency and scales and the ability to progressively reduce the size of the gap to one sample wide at the transform apex. Two types of multi-scale transform were considered for comparative evaluation; 2-dimensional (2D) discrete cosines (DCT) pyramid and 2D discrete wavelets (DWT). For image gap estimation, a family of conventional weighted interpolators and directional edge-guided interpolators are developed and evaluated. Two types of edges were considered; ‘local’ edges or textures and ‘global’ edges such as the boundaries between objects or within/across patterns in the image. For local edge, or texture, modelling a number of methods were explored which aim to reconstruct a set of gradients across the restored gap as those computed from the known neighbourhood. These differential gradients are estimated along the geometrical vertical, horizontal and cross directions for each pixel of the gap. The edge-guided interpolators aim to operate on distinct regions confined within edge lines. For global edge-guided interpolation, two main methods explored are Sobel and Canny detectors. The latter provides improved edge detection. The combination and integration of different multi-scale domains, local edge interpolators, global edge-guided interpolators and iterative estimation of edges provided a variety of configurations that were comparatively explored and evaluated. For evaluation a set of images commonly used in the literature work were employed together with simulated regular and random image gaps at a variety of loss rate. The performance measures used are the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structure similarity index (SSIM). The results obtained are better than the state of the art reported in the literature

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of-the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks