Simple unequal error protection mechanism for multimedia traffic using the Alamouti structure with hierarchical modulation and signal space diversity

Abstract

Conventional hierarchical modulation (HM) only provides two levels of unequal error protection (UEP) for multimedia traffic transmission. An HM-based scheme is proposed that provides multiple levels of UEP by exploiting the structure of the Alamouti scheme. A typical Alamouti scheme operates based on the assumptions that the modulation scheme used for the transmission at each antenna is the same and that the power in each antenna is equal. In the proposed system, these two operating assumptions are relaxed, in that the modulation schemes as well as the transmission powers for the two antennas are varied in order to propose a multiple level UEP mechanism for multimedia traffic. The concept is applied to a recently proposed system which uses the Alamouti space-time block code (STBC) structure with HM and signal space diversity (SSD), and it is shown via theoretical and simulation results how the simple UEP mechanism can accommodate the simultaneous transmission of multiple classes of multimedia traffic.

Hierarchical Colour-Shift-Keying Aided Layered Video Streaming for the Visible Light Downlink

“…HM based on QAM was investigated as the UEP modulation method [107]. The authors of [94], [96], [97] proposed HM-QAM-style MIMO systems and analysed the attainable UEP properties. However, the authors of [94], [96], [97] carried out their investigations without actually considering multimedia sources.…”

“…The authors of [94], [96], [97] proposed HM-QAM-style MIMO systems and analysed the attainable UEP properties. However, the authors of [94], [96], [97] carried out their investigations without actually considering multimedia sources. By contrast, the authors of [95] jointly optimised the channel coding parameters and the HM parameters in a coded-HM-aided progressive image transmission system, in order to minimize the video distortion.…”

“…2014 Zamkotsian et al [93] designed a multilevel space-shiftkeying scheme to provide UEP for transmission over Rician fading channels. Quazi and Xu [97] proposed HM-QAM-style MIMO systems and analysed the attainable UEP properties. 2015 Sun et al [103] investigated triple-layer turbo-trelliscoded HM in the context of cooperative communications.…”

BER performance of an MRT‐HQAM system over Rayleigh fading channels

“…Moreover, HM is used for simultaneous delivery of multi‐class data which may have varying bit error rate (BER) requirements for each data class [6, 7]. Recently, methods for achieving a large number of layers (for various types of multi‐class data) have been introduced in [7] and explored in [8]. The use of HM for network upgrades is presented in [9, 10] where factors such as backwards compatibility, computational complexity, receiver replacement and power levels were addressed.…”