A fast forward error correction allocation algorithm for unequal error protection of video transmission over wireless channels

A new fast forward error correction (FEC) allocation algorithm for unequal error protection (UEP) of video transmission over wireless channels is proposed in this paper. First, an UEP scheme, which takes into consideration the non-uniformly distributed importance of frames in a group of pictures (GOP) and macroblocks in a video frame, is proposed. An enhanced video error propagation model, namely expected number of macroblocks error propagation (ENMEP) is also proposed in this paper to measure the amount of error propagation caused by transmission errors. Finally, by making use of our proposed ENMEP error propagation model, a fast FEC allocation algorithm for our proposed UEP scheme is also proposed. Simulation results demonstrate that our scheme outperforms the previous UEP scheme and the classical equal error protection (EEP) scheme.

I. Introduction

With the increasing popularity of wireless broadband networks, such as WiMax, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, etc, transmission of video over wireless broadband networks is also gaining popularity. Although wireless broadband networks are able to transmit high bit-rate video data, robust transmission of video over wireless broadband networks is still a challenging task due to the inherent high bit-error-rate (BER) and channel quality fluctuation of the wireless networks [1]. Due to the extensive use of variable length coding in standard video coding schemes, a single transmission error in the coded video bitstream may cause the video decoder to skip to the next slice or frame and this will result in a significant visual quality distortion. In addition, due to the use of motion-compensated based video coding technique, a single bit error on the compressed video bit-stream may result the error to propagate to neighboring spatial blocks and frames [2].