Error Correction and Concealment of Bock Based, Motion-Compensated Temporal Predition, Transform Coded Video

Error Correction and Concealment of Block Based, Motion-Compensated Temporal Prediction, Transform Coded Video David L. Robie 133 Pages Directed by Dr. Russell M. Mersereau The use of the Internet and wireless networks to bring multimedia to the consumer continues to expand. The transmission of these products is always subject to corruption due to errors such as bit errors or lost and ill-timed packets; however, in many cases, such as real time video transmission, retransmission request (ARQ) is not practical. Therefore receivers must be capable of recovering from corrupted data. Errors can be mitigated using forward error correction in the encoder or error concealment techniques in the decoder. This thesis investigates the use of forward error correction (FEC) techniques in the encoder and error concealment in the decoder in block-based, motion-compensated, temporal prediction, transform codecs. It will show improvement over standard FEC applications and improvements in error concealment relative to the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standard. To this end, this dissertation will describe the following contributions and proofs-of-concept in the area of error concealment and correction in block-based video transmission. A temporal error concealment algorithm which uses motion-compensated macroblocks from previous frames. A spatial error concealment algorithm which uses the Hough transform to detect edges in both foreground and background colors and using directional interpolation or directional filtering to provide improved edge reproduction. A codec which uses data hiding to transmit error correction information. An enhanced codec which builds upon the last by improving the performance of the codec in the error-free environment while maintaining excellent error recovery capabilities. A method to allocate Reed-Solomon (R-S) packet-based forward error correction that will decrease distortion (using a PSNR metric) at the receiver compared to standard FEC techniques. Finally, under the constraints of a constant bit rate, the tradeoff between traditional R-S FEC and alternate forward concealment information (FCI) is evaluated. Each of these developments is compared and contrasted to state of the art techniques and are able to show improvements using widely accepted metrics. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of future work.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Mersereau, Russell; Committee Member: Altunbasak, Yucel; Committee Member: Fekri, Faramarz; Committee Member: Lanterman, Aaron; Committee Member: Zhou, Haomi

Analyzing video compression for transporting over wireless fading channels

Wireless video communication is becoming increasingly popular these days with new applications such as TV on mobile and video phones. Commercial success of these applications requires superior video quality at the receiver. So it is imperative to analyze the effect of a wireless channel on a video transmission. The aim of this research is to analyze the video transmission over Rayleigh fading channels for various bit error rates (BER), signal to noise ratios (Eb/N0) and Doppler rates, and to suggest which source coding scheme is best at which BER, Eb/N0 and Doppler rates. Alternative schemes such as hybrid (digital/analog) schemes were considered and their performances were compared with pure digital communication. It is also shown that the combination of digital and analog video communication does not yield any better performance compared to pure digital video communication

Enhanced coding, clock recovery and detection for a magnetic credit card

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/2299 on 03.04.2017 by CS (TIS)This thesis describes the background, investigation and construction of a system for storing data on the magnetic stripe of a standard three-inch plastic credit in: inch card. Investigation shows that the information storage limit within a 3.375 in by 0.11 in rectangle of the stripe is bounded to about 20 kBytes. Practical issues limit the data storage to around 300 Bytes with a low raw error rate: a four-fold density increase over the standard. Removal of the timing jitter (that is prob-' ably caused by the magnetic medium particle size) would increase the limit to 1500 Bytes with no other system changes. This is enough capacity for either a small digital passport photograph or a digitized signature: making it possible to remove printed versions from the surface of the card. To achieve even these modest gains has required the development of a new variable rate code that is more resilient to timing errors than other codes in its efficiency class. The tabulation of the effects of timing errors required the construction of a new code metric and self-recovering decoders. In addition, a new method of timing recovery, based on the signal 'snatches' has been invented to increase the rapidity with which a Bayesian decoder can track the changing velocity of a hand-swiped card. The timing recovery and Bayesian detector have been integrated into one computation (software) unit that is self-contained and can decode a general class of (d, k) constrained codes. Additionally, the unit has a signal truncation mechanism to alleviate some of the effects of non-linear distortion that are present when a magnetic card is read with a magneto-resistive magnetic sensor that has been driven beyond its bias magnetization. While the storage density is low and the total storage capacity is meagre in comparison with contemporary storage devices, the high density card may still have a niche role to play in society. Nevertheless, in the face of the Smart card its long term outlook is uncertain. However, several areas of coding and detection under short-duration extreme conditions have brought new decoding methods to light. The scope of these methods is not limited just to the credit card

Layer-based coding, smoothing, and scheduling of low-bit-rate video for teleconferencing over tactical ATM networks

This work investigates issues related to distribution of low bit rate video within the context of a teleconferencing application deployed over a tactical ATM network. The main objective is to develop mechanisms that support transmission of low bit rate video streams as a series of scalable layers that progressively improve quality. The hierarchical nature of the layered video stream is actively exploited along the transmission path from the sender to the recipients to facilitate transmission. A new layered coder design tailored to video teleconferencing in the tactical environment is proposed. Macroblocks selected due to scene motion are layered via subband decomposition using the fast Haar transform. A generalized layering scheme groups the subbands to form an arbitrary number of layers. As a layering scheme suitable for low motion video is unsuitable for static slides, the coder adapts the layering scheme to the video content. A suboptimal rate control mechanism that reduces the kappa dimensional rate distortion problem resulting from the use of multiple quantizers tailored to each layer to a 1 dimensional problem by creating a single rate distortion curve for the coder in terms of a suboptimal set of kappa dimensional quantizer vectors is investigated. Rate control is thus simplified into a table lookup of a codebook containing the suboptimal quantizer vectors. The rate controller is ideal for real time video and limits fluctuations in the bit stream with no corresponding visible fluctuations in perceptual quality. A traffic smoother prior to network entry is developed to increase queuing and scheduler efficiency. Three levels of smoothing are studied: frame, layer, and cell interarrival. Frame level smoothing occurs via rate control at the application. Interleaving and cell interarrival smoothing are accomplished using a leaky bucket mechanism inserted prior to the adaptation layer or within the adaptation layerhttp://www.archive.org/details/layerbasedcoding00parkLieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Telemedicine

Telemedicine is a rapidly evolving field as new technologies are implemented for example for the development of wireless sensors, quality data transmission. Using the Internet applications such as counseling, clinical consultation support and home care monitoring and management are more and more realized, which improves access to high level medical care in underserved areas. The 23 chapters of this book present manifold examples of telemedicine treating both theoretical and practical foundations and application scenarios

Robust Image Transmission using Resynchronizing Variable-Length Codes and Error Concealment

Resynchronizing variable-length codes (RVLCs) for large alphabets are designed by first creating resynchronizing Huffman codes and then adding an extended synchronizing codeword, and the RVLCs are applied to both JPEG and wavelet-based image compression. The RVLCs demonstrate the desired resynchronization properties, both at a symbol level and structurally so that decoded data can be correctly placed within an image following errors. The encoded images, when subject to both structural and statistical error detection and concealment, can tolerate BERs of up to and are very tolerant of burst errors. The RVLC-JPEG images have negligible overhead at visually lossless bit rates, while the RVLC-wavelet overhead can be adjusted based on the desired tolerance to burst errors and typically ranges from 7-18%. The tolerance to both bit and burst errors demonstrates that images coded with such RVLCs can be transmitted over imperfect channels suffering bit errors or packet losses without channel co..