H.264/AVC error resilience tools suitable for 3G mobile video services

The emergence of third generation mobile system (3G) makes video transmission in wireless environment possible, and the latest 3GPP/3GPP2 standards require 3G terminals support H.264/AVC. Due to high packet loss rate in wireless envi- ronment, error resilience for 3G terminals is necessary. Moreover, because of the hardware restrictions, 3G mobile terminals support only part of H.264/AVC error resilience tool. This paper analyzes various error resilience tools and their functions, and presents 2 error resilience strategies for 3G mobile streaming video services and mobile conversational services. Performances of the proposed error resilience strategies were tested using off-line common test conditions. Experiments showed that the proposed error resilience strategies can yield reasonably satisfactory results.

Content based error resilience coding using redundant coding, reference frame modification, and mode decision

Quality degradation occurs during transmission of video streaming over the error-prone network. By jointly using redundant slice, reference frame selection, and intra/inters mode decision, a content and end-to-end rate-distortion based error resilience method is proposed. Firstly, the intra/inter mode decision is implemented using macro-block(MB) refresh, and then redundant picture and reference frame selection are utilized together to realize the redundant coding. The estimated error propagation distortion and bit consumption of refresh MB are used for the mode and reference frame decision of refresh MB. Secondly, by analyzing the statistical property in the successive frames, the error propagation distortion and bit consumption are formulated as a function of temporal distance. Encoding parameters of the current frame is determined by the estimated error propagation distortion and bit consumption. Thirdly, by comparing the rate-distortion cost of different combinations, proper selection of error resilience method is performed before the encoding process of the current frame. Finally, the MB mode and bit distribution of the primary picture are analyzed for the derivation of the texture information. The motion information is subsequently incorporated for the calculation of video content complexity to implement the content based redundant coding. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves significant performance gains over the LA-RDO and HRP method when video is transmitted over error-prone channel.

Error Resilient Video Communication Based on Picture Level Adaptive Frame / Field Coding

Packet loss protection method based on picture level adaptive frame /field coding (PAFF)was presented. Firstly,the end-to-end rate-distortion analysis for PAFF on the current frame was performed. Secondly,in order to evaluate the severity of error propagation in the following frames,the error propagation intensity and human visual quality sensitivity of different areas were taken into consideration. It was followed by the quantification of relative importance. Finally,the proper coding mode was chosen utilizing an unequal comparison procedure. The simulation results show that the proposed method can improve peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) up to 0. 9 dB and 1. 6 dB comparing with the field only and the dispersed flexible macro-block ordering (FMO)only methods respectively.

Low-Complexity Error-Control Methods for Scalable Video Streaming

In this paper, low-complexity error-resilience and error-concealment methods for the scalable video coding （SVC） extension of H.264/AVC are described. At the encoder, multiple-description coding （MDC） is used as error-resilient coding. Balanced scalable multiple descriptions are generated by mixing the pre-encoded scalable bit streams. Each description is wholly decodable using a standard SVC decoder. A preprocessor can be placed before an SVC decoder to extract the packets from the highest-quality bit stream. At the decoder, error concealment involves using a lightweight decoder preprocessor to generate a valid bit stream from the available network abstraction layer （NAL） units when medium-grain scalability （MGS） layers are used. Modifications are made to the NAL unit header or slice header if some NAL units of MGS layers are lost. The number of additional packets that a decoder discards as a result of a packet loss is minimized. The proposed error-resilience and error-concealment methods require little computation, which makes them suitable for real-time video streaming. Experiment results show that the proposed methods significantly reduce quality degradation caused by packet loss.

AN ERROR-RESILIENT H.263+ CODING SCHEME FOR VIDEO TRANSMISSION OVER WIRELESS NETWORKS

Video transmission over wireless networks has received much attention recently for its restricted bandwidth and high bit-error rate, Based on H.263＋, by reversing part stream sequences of each Group Of Block （GOB）, an error resilient scheme is presented to improve video robustness without additional bandwidth burden. Error patterns are employed to simulate Widcband Code Division Multiple Acccss,（WCDMA） channels to check out error resilience performances. Simulation results show that both subjective and objective qualities of the reconstructed images are improved remarkably. The mean Peak Signal to Noise Ratio （PSNR） is increased by 0.5dB, and the highest increment is 2dB.

A novel intra refresh scheme for wireless video transmission

The burst error of wireless channels and the two-state Markov wireless model are analyzed. Based on this model and the coding modes of the video encoder,the channel distortion of inter-coding and intra-coding due to burst error is deduced. Then we propose a novel intra refresh scheme in rate-distortion (R-D) framework. This scheme optimizes the error resilience and coding efficiency of wireless video transmission system. It can also stop error propagation and reduce channel distortion effectively. Simulations under different channel conditions verify the improvements of the proposed scheme with respect to error resilience for wireless video communication.

An Improved MDC-Based ORB-DCT Method for Video Streaming over the Internet

One of the most interesting questions of video streaming over the Intemet is packet loss. Some error resilient technologies have been proposed to overcome quality decrease of reconsixucted video occurred due to packet loss, in which optimized reconstructionbased DCT （ORB-DCT） utilizes two-direction interleaving. An improved ORB-DCT （IORB-DCT）, which uses four-direction interleaving, is proposed in this paper. Experimental results are demonstrated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed IORB-DCT.

ESSENTIAL INFORMATION AGGREGATION OF INTRA CODED VIDEO FRAME FOR WIRELESS TRANSMISSON

A novel error resilient method based on Essential Information Aggregation (EIA) technique is proposed for robust wireless transmission of intra coded video frames. This method modifies the original video stream structure so as to mitigate the effect of decoding loss of synchronization within a video frame, for which Macro Block Aligned (MBA) error detection method is accompanied to be developed. Experiments on an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) wireless simulation platform and H.263+ baseline video codec show that it can obtain better subjective and objective image quality than existing error resilience approaches.

An Error Concealment Approach Based on H.263 Video Decoding in Pixel Domain

The video bit stream coded by H.263 recommendation is vulnerable to channel errors. For coded information, bit errors could result in error propagation, loss of synchronization and severe data loss. All of these will lead to the descent of image qualities in the end. In this paper, in order to solve this problem, we present a receiver based error concealment algorithm that uses information in pixel domain to detect errors and resynchronization, identify the location of the affected blocks and estimate erroneous data. The concealment algorithm is kept simple, no additional bit rate is required, and no modification is necessary to an existing encoder, so the real time decoding and concealment are possible. Computer emulation results show that the image quality after error concealment is significantly improved.

Key-frame reference selection for non-feedback video communication

This article addresses the problem of reference picture optimization in video communication over error prone networks. A novel estimation model for transmission distortion is proposed. This model is capable of recursively estimating the overall end-to-end distortion caused by quantization, error propagation, and error concealment. Simulation results show that this model can accurately estimate channel distortion. Then, based on the distortion estimation model, a new non-feedback key-frame reference picture selection （KRPS） algorithm is developed. The optimum reference picture minimizes the transmission distortion under the rate-distortion optimization framework. Extensive experiment results demonstrate that the proposed KRPS algorithm substantially achieves more peak signal to noise ratio （PSNR） gain over traditional prediction, especially in low bit-rate transmission.

Better-Than-Worst-Case Design: Progress and Opportunities

Today, designers are forced to reduce performance and increase power requirements in order to reserve larger margins that are required due to the greater variability introduced by smaller feature sizes and manufacturing variations of modern IC designs. The better-than-worst-case design can both address the variability problem and achieve higher performance/energy efficiency than the worst-case design. This paper surveys the progress to date, provides a snapshot of the most representative methods in this field, and discusses the future research directions of the better-than-worst-case design.