Multiframe video coding for improved performance over wireless channels

Abstract

We propose and evaluate a multi-frame extension to block motion compensation (BMC) coding of videoconferencing-type video signals for wireless channels. The multi-frame BMC (MF-BMC) coder makes use of the redundancy that exists across multiple frames in typical videoconferencing sequences to achieve additional compression over that obtained by using the single frame BMC (SF-BMC) approach, such as in the base-level H.263 codec. The MF-BMC approach also has an inherent ability of overcoming some transmission errors and is thus more robust when compared to the SF-BMC approach. We model the error propagation process in MF-BMC coding as a multiple Markov chain and use Markov chain analysis to infer that the use of multiple frames in motion compensation increases robustness. The Markov chain analysis is also used to devise a simple scheme which randomizes the selection of the frame (amongst the multiple previous frames) used in BMC to achieve additional robustness. The MF-BMC coders proposed are a multi-frame extension of the base level H.263 coder and are found to be more robust than the base level H.263 coder when subjected to simulated errors commonly encountered on wireless channels.

Video Communications Over Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks Using Source Coding Diversity and Multiple Paths

“…Therefore, it is challenging to provide error resilient video coding for reliable video communications over such lossy networks. A number of techniques have been proposed to increase the robustness of video communications to packet loss, such as intra/inter mode selection (Zhu & Kerofsky, 1998;Hinds et al, 1998;Cote & Kossentini, 1999;Cote et al, 2000;Zhang, Regunathan & Rose, 2000;Stockhammer et al, 2002;Eisenberg et al, 2006;Zhang et al, 2007), reference picture selection (Wiegand et al, 2000;Budagavi & Gibson, 2001), and multiple description video coding (Wang, Reibman & Lin, 2005). Intra coding is an important technique for mitigating error propagation due to packet loss and makes the video stream more robust to errors.…”

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

“…& Chang, P.C., 1999), (Girod, B. & Färber, N., 1999) and (Budagavi, M. & Gibson, J.D., 2001). These methods however introduce additional delays making them unsuitable in wireless real-time applications and are not applicable for typical broadcasting/multicasting applications.…”

Network-Adaptive Video Communication Using Packet Path Diversity and Rate-Distortion Optimized Reference Picture Selection

“…In [25,26], long-term memory (LTM) prediction is used for both improved coding efficiency and Network-Adaptive Video Communication Using Packet Path Diversity 347 error resilience over wireless networks. Different macroblocks in a frame may be predicted from different reference frames, which makes it difficult to put an entire frame into an IP packet and manage the prediction dependency at the packet level during transmission.…”