3D Wavelet-Based Video Codec with Human Perceptual Model

This thesis explores the use of a human perceptual model in video compression, channel coding, error concealment and subjective image quality measurement. The perceptual distortion model just-noticeable-distortion (JND) is investigated. A video encoding/decoding scheme based on 3D wavelet decomposition and the human perceptual model is implemented. It provides a prior compression quality control which is distinct from the conventional video coding system. JND is applied in quantizer design to improve the subjective quality ofcompressed video. The 3D wavelet decomposition helps to remove spatial and temporal redundancy and provides scalability of video quality. In order to conceal the errors that may occur under bad wireless channel conditions, a slicing method and a joint source channel coding scenario that combines RCPC with CRC and uses the distortion information toallocate convolutional coding rates are proposed. A new subjective quality index based on JND is proposed and used to evaluate the overall performance at different signal to noise ratios (SNR) and at different compression ratios.Due to the wide use of arithmetic coding (AC) in data compression, we consider it as a readily available unit in the video codec system for broadcasting. A new scheme for conditional access (CA) sub-system is designed based on the cryptographic property of arithmetic coding. Itsperformance is analyzed along with its application in a multi-resolution video compression system. This scheme simplifies the conditional access sub-system and provides satisfactory system reliability

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

Research and developments of Dirac video codec

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University.In digital video compression, apart from storage, successful transmission of the compressed video data over the bandwidth limited erroneous channels is another important issue. To enable a video codec for broadcasting application, it is required to implement the corresponding coding tools (e.g. error-resilient coding, rate control etc.). They are normally non-normative parts of a video codec and hence their specifications are not defined in the standard. In Dirac as well, the original codec is optimized for storage purpose only and so, several non-normative part of the encoding tools are still required in order to be able to use in other types of application. Being the "Research and Developments of the Dirac Video Codec" as the research title, phase I of the project is mainly focused on the error-resilient transmission over a noisy channel. The error-resilient coding method used here is a simple and low complex coding scheme which provides the error-resilient transmission of the compressed video bitstream of Dirac video encoder over the packet erasure wired network. The scheme combines source and channel coding approach where error-resilient source coding is achieved by data partitioning in the wavelet transformed domain and channel coding is achieved through the application of either Rate-Compatible Punctured Convolutional (RCPC) Code or Turbo Code (TC) using un-equal error protection between header plus MV and data. The scheme is designed mainly for the packet-erasure channel, i.e. targeted for the Internet broadcasting application. But, for a bandwidth limited channel, it is still required to limit the amount of bits generated from the encoder depending on the available bandwidth in addition to the error-resilient coding. So, in the 2nd phase of the project, a rate control algorithm is presented. The algorithm is based upon the Quality Factor (QF) optimization method where QF of the encoded video is adaptively changing in order to achieve average bitrate which is constant over each Group of Picture (GOP). A relation between the bitrate, R and the QF, which is called Rate-QF (R-QF) model is derived in order to estimate the optimum QF of the current encoding frame for a given target bitrate, R. In some applications like video conferencing, real-time encoding and decoding with minimum delay is crucial, but, the ability to do real-time encoding/decoding is largely determined by the complexity of the encoder/decoder. As we all know that motion estimation process inside the encoder is the most time consuming stage. So, reducing the complexity of the motion estimation stage will certainly give one step closer to the real-time application. So, as a partial contribution toward realtime application, in the final phase of the research, a fast Motion Estimation (ME) strategy is designed and implemented. It is the combination of modified adaptive search plus semi-hierarchical way of motion estimation. The same strategy was implemented in both Dirac and H.264 in order to investigate its performance on different codecs. Together with this fast ME strategy, a method which is called partial cost function calculation in order to further reduce down the computational load of the cost function calculation was presented. The calculation is based upon the pre-defined set of patterns which were chosen in such a way that they have as much maximum coverage as possible over the whole block. In summary, this research work has contributed to the error-resilient transmission of compressed bitstreams of Dirac video encoder over a bandwidth limited error prone channel. In addition to this, the final phase of the research has partially contributed toward the real-time application of the Dirac video codec by implementing a fast motion estimation strategy together with partial cost function calculation idea.BBC R&D and Brunel University

Source-channel coding for robust image transmission and for dirty-paper coding

In this dissertation, we studied two seemingly uncorrelated, but conceptually related problems in terms of source-channel coding: 1) wireless image transmission and 2) Costa ("dirty-paper") code design. In the first part of the dissertation, we consider progressive image transmission over a wireless system employing space-time coded OFDM. The space-time coded OFDM system based on a newly built broadband MIMO fading model is theoretically evaluated by assuming perfect channel state information (CSI) at the receiver for coherent detection. Then an adaptive modulation scheme is proposed to pick the constellation size that offers the best reconstructed image quality for each average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). A more practical scenario is also considered without the assumption of perfect CSI. We employ low-complexity decision-feedback decoding for differentially space- time coded OFDM systems to exploit transmitter diversity. For JSCC, we adopt a product channel code structure that is proven to provide powerful error protection and bursty error correction. To further improve the system performance, we also apply the powerful iterative (turbo) coding techniques and propose the iterative decoding of differentially space-time coded multiple descriptions of images. The second part of the dissertation deals with practical dirty-paper code designs. We first invoke an information-theoretical interpretation of algebraic binning and motivate the code design guidelines in terms of source-channel coding. Then two dirty-paper code designs are proposed. The first is a nested turbo construction based on soft-output trellis-coded quantization (SOTCQ) for source coding and turbo trellis- coded modulation (TTCM) for channel coding. A novel procedure is devised to balance the dimensionalities of the equivalent lattice codes corresponding to SOTCQ and TTCM. The second dirty-paper code design employs TCQ and IRA codes for near-capacity performance. This is done by synergistically combining TCQ with IRA codes so that they work together as well as they do individually. Our TCQ/IRA design approaches the dirty-paper capacity limit at the low rate regime (e.g., < 1:0 bit/sample), while our nested SOTCQ/TTCM scheme provides the best performs so far at medium-to-high rates (e.g., >= 1:0 bit/sample). Thus the two proposed practical code designs are complementary to each other

Improved quality block-based low bit rate video coding.

The aim of this research is to develop algorithms for enhancing the subjective quality and coding efficiency of standard block-based video coders. In the past few years, numerous video coding standards based on motion-compensated block-transform structure have been established where block-based motion estimation is used for reducing the correlation between consecutive images and block transform is used for coding the resulting motion-compensated residual images. Due to the use of predictive differential coding and variable length coding techniques, the output data rate exhibits extreme fluctuations. A rate control algorithm is devised for achieving a stable output data rate. This rate control algorithm, which is essentially a bit-rate estimation algorithm, is then employed in a bit-allocation algorithm for improving the visual quality of the coded images, based on some prior knowledge of the images. Block-based hybrid coders achieve high compression ratio mainly due to the employment of a motion estimation and compensation stage in the coding process. The conventional bit-allocation strategy for these coders simply assigns the bits required by the motion vectors and the rest to the residual image. However, at very low bit-rates, this bit-allocation strategy is inadequate as the motion vector bits takes up a considerable portion of the total bit-rate. A rate-constrained selection algorithm is presented where an analysis-by-synthesis approach is used for choosing the best motion vectors in term of resulting bit rate and image quality. This selection algorithm is then implemented for mode selection. A simple algorithm based on the above-mentioned bit-rate estimation algorithm is developed for the latter to reduce the computational complexity. For very low bit-rate applications, it is well-known that block-based coders suffer from blocking artifacts. A coding mode is presented for reducing these annoying artifacts by coding a down-sampled version of the residual image with a smaller quantisation step size. Its applications for adaptive source/channel coding and for coding fast changing sequences are examined

Research and developments of distributed video coding

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The recent developed Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is typically suitable for the applications such as wireless/wired video sensor network, mobile camera etc. where the traditional video coding standard is not feasible due to the constrained computation at the encoder. With DVC, the computational burden is moved from encoder to decoder. The compression efficiency is achieved via joint decoding at the decoder. The practical application of DVC is referred to Wyner-Ziv video coding (WZ) where the side information is available at the decoder to perform joint decoding. This join decoding inevitably causes a very complex decoder. In current WZ video coding issues, many of them emphasise how to improve the system coding performance but neglect the huge complexity caused at the decoder. The complexity of the decoder has direct influence to the system output. The beginning period of this research targets to optimise the decoder in pixel domain WZ video coding (PDWZ), while still achieves similar compression performance. More specifically, four issues are raised to optimise the input block size, the side information generation, the side information refinement process and the feedback channel respectively. The transform domain WZ video coding (TDWZ) has distinct superior performance to the normal PDWZ due to the exploitation in spatial direction during the encoding. However, since there is no motion estimation at the encoder in WZ video coding, the temporal correlation is not exploited at all at the encoder in all current WZ video coding issues. In the middle period of this research, the 3D DCT is adopted in the TDWZ to remove redundancy in both spatial and temporal direction thus to provide even higher coding performance. In the next step of this research, the performance of transform domain Distributed Multiview Video Coding (DMVC) is also investigated. Particularly, three types transform domain DMVC frameworks which are transform domain DMVC using TDWZ based 2D DCT, transform domain DMVC using TDWZ based on 3D DCT and transform domain residual DMVC using TDWZ based on 3D DCT are investigated respectively. One of the important applications of WZ coding principle is error-resilience. There have been several attempts to apply WZ error-resilient coding for current video coding standard e.g. H.264/AVC or MEPG 2. The final stage of this research is the design of WZ error-resilient scheme for wavelet based video codec. To balance the trade-off between error resilience ability and bandwidth consumption, the proposed scheme emphasises the protection of the Region of Interest (ROI) area. The efficiency of bandwidth utilisation is achieved by mutual efforts of WZ coding and sacrificing the quality of unimportant area. In summary, this research work contributed to achieves several advances in WZ video coding. First of all, it is targeting to build an efficient PDWZ with optimised decoder. Secondly, it aims to build an advanced TDWZ based on 3D DCT, which then is applied into multiview video coding to realise advanced transform domain DMVC. Finally, it aims to design an efficient error-resilient scheme for wavelet video codec, with which the trade-off between bandwidth consumption and error-resilience can be better balanced

Progressive transmission of medical images

A novel adaptive source-channel coding scheme for progressive transmission of medical images with a feedback system is therefore proposed in this dissertation. The overall design includes Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Embedded Zerotree Wavelet (EZW) coding, Joint Source-Channel Coding (JSCC), prioritization of region of interest (RoI), variability of parity length based on feedback, and the corresponding hardware design utilising Simulink. The JSCC can achieve an efficient transmission by incorporating unequal error projection (UEP) and rate allocation. An algorithm is also developed to estimate the number of erroneous data in the receiver. The algorithm detects the address in which the number of symbols for each subblock is indicated, and reassigns an estimated correct data according to a decision making criterion, if error data is detected. The proposed system has been designed based on Simulink which can be used to generate netlist for portable devices. A new compression method called Compressive Sensing (CS) is also revisited in this work. CS exhibits many advantages in comparison with EZW based on our experimental results. DICOM JPEG2000 is an efficient coding standard for lossy or lossless multi-component image coding. However, it does not provide any mechanism for automatic RoI definition, and is more complex compared to our proposed scheme. The proposed system significantly reduces the transmission time, lowers computation cost, and maintains an error-free state in the RoI with regards to the above provided features. A MATLAB-based TCP/IP connection is established to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed interactive and adaptive progressive transmission system. The proposed system is simulated for both binary and symmetric channel (BSC) and Rayleigh channel. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the design.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Progressive transmission of medical images

A novel adaptive source-channel coding scheme for progressive transmission of medical images with a feedback system is therefore proposed in this dissertation. The overall design includes Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Embedded Zerotree Wavelet (EZW) coding, Joint Source-Channel Coding (JSCC), prioritization of region of interest (RoI), variability of parity length based on feedback, and the corresponding hardware design utilising Simulink. The JSCC can achieve an efficient transmission by incorporating unequal error projection (UEP) and rate allocation. An algorithm is also developed to estimate the number of erroneous data in the receiver. The algorithm detects the address in which the number of symbols for each subblock is indicated, and reassigns an estimated correct data according to a decision making criterion, if error data is detected. The proposed system has been designed based on Simulink which can be used to generate netlist for portable devices. A new compression method called Compressive Sensing (CS) is also revisited in this work. CS exhibits many advantages in comparison with EZW based on our experimental results. DICOM JPEG2000 is an efficient coding standard for lossy or lossless multi-component image coding. However, it does not provide any mechanism for automatic RoI definition, and is more complex compared to our proposed scheme. The proposed system significantly reduces the transmission time, lowers computation cost, and maintains an error-free state in the RoI with regards to the above provided features. A MATLAB-based TCP/IP connection is established to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed interactive and adaptive progressive transmission system. The proposed system is simulated for both binary and symmetric channel (BSC) and Rayleigh channel. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the desig

Self-concatenated code design and its application in power-efficient cooperative communications

In this tutorial, we have focused on the design of binary self-concatenated coding schemes with the help of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts and Union bound analysis. The design methodology of future iteratively decoded self-concatenated aided cooperative communication schemes is presented. In doing so, we will identify the most important milestones in the area of channel coding, concatenated coding schemes and cooperative communication systems till date and suggest future research directions