Error-resilient MPEG-4 video communication over error-prone wireless networks

Abstract

This work presents an error-resilient MPEG-4 video communication system. The system comprises an error-resilient encoder, an adaptive error-resilient transcoder, an error-resilient decoder and the PLBP encoder/decoder. It has been evaluated under a configurable network error simulator. In addition, the system integrates the error resilience tools defined in the MPEG-4 visual standard, namely; video packet structure, header extension code (HEC) and NEWPRED, as well as three proposed novel error-resilient techniques, namely; prioritized-level bitstream protection (PLBP), protected data partitioning (PDP) and restorative intra adoption (RIA). In the decoder, three error concealment techniques are implemented. They are temporal replacement, motion replacement, and predictive motion replacement. The decoder also implements an error detection mechanism that has high sensitivity to catch errors. Finally, the performance of the hybrid error-resilient system has been evaluated. The experimental results show that under error-prone networks, acceptable video quality has been successfully retained without incurring much overhead.