Mobile users' data rate and quality of service are limited by the fact that, within the duration of any given call, they experience severe variations in signal attenuation, thereby necessitating the use of some type of diversity. In this two-part paper, we propose a new form of spatial diversity, in which diversity gains are achieved via the cooperation of mobile users. Part I describes the user cooperation strategy, while Part II (see ibid., p.1939-48) focuses on implementation issues and performance analysis. Results show that, even though the interuser channel is noisy, cooperation leads not only to an increase in capacity for both users but also to a more robust system, where users' achievable rates are less susceptible to channel variations.

http://dns2.asia.edu.tw/~ysho/YSHO-English/2000%20Engineering/PDF/IEE%20Tra%20Com51,%201927.pdf

User cooperation diversity. Part I. System description

With the emergence of broadband wireless networks and increasing demand of multimedia information on the Internet, wireless multimedia services are foreseen to become widely deployed in the next decade. Real-time video transmission typically has requirements on quality of service (QoS). However, wireless channels are unreliable and the channel bandwidth varies with time, which may cause severe degradation in video quality. In addition, for video multicast, the heterogeneity of receivers makes it difficult to achieve efficiency and flexibility. To address these issues, three techniques, namely, scalable video coding, network-aware adaptation of end systems, and adaptive QoS support from networks, have been developed. This paper unifies the three techniques and presents an adaptive framework, which specifically addresses video transport over wireless networks. The adaptive framework consists of three basic components: (1) scalable video representations; (2) network-aware end systems; and (3) adaptive services. Under this framework, as wireless channel conditions change, mobile terminals and network elements can scale the video streams and transport the scaled video streams to receivers with a smooth change of perceptual quality. The key advantages of the adaptive framework are: (1) perceptual quality is changed gracefully during periods of QoS fluctuations and hand-offs; and (2) the resources are shared in a fair manner.

/pdf/scalable-video-coding-and-transport-over-broadband-wireless-xxgco7r0ab.pdf

Scalable video coding and transport over broadband wireless networks

Two novel error concealment techniques are proposed for video transmission over noisy channels in this work. First, we present a spatial error concealment method to compensate a lost macroblock in intra-coded frames, in which no useful temporal information is available. Based on selective directional interpolation, our method can recover both smooth and edge areas efficiently. Second, we examine a dynamic mode-weighted error concealment method for replenishing missing pixels in a lost macroblock of inter-coded frames. Our method adopts a decoder-based error tracking model and combines several concealment modes adaptively to minimize the mean square error of each pixel. The method is capable of concealing lost packets as well as reducing the error propagation effect. Extensive simulations have been performed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed methods in error-prone environments

/pdf/spatial-and-temporal-error-concealment-techniques-for-video-3s91x01zwo.pdf

Spatial and Temporal Error Concealment Techniques for Video Transmission Over Noisy Channels

The objectives of this article are two-fold: First, to present the problem of joint source and channel (JSC) coding from a graphical model perspective and second, to propose a structure that uses a new graphical model for jointly encoding and decoding a redundant source. In the first part of the article, relevant contributions to JSC coding, ranging from the Slepian-Wolf problem to joint decoding of variable length codes with state-of-the-art source codes, are reviewed and summarized. In the second part, a double low-density parity-check (LDPC) code for JSC coding is proposed. The double LDPC code can be decoded as a single bipartite graph using standard belief propagation (BP) and its limiting performance is analyzed by using extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart approximations.

Joint Source and Channel Coding

A content adaptive, network aware approach for joint optimization of wireless video transmission is presented in this article. The joint system optimization approach has been developed in the framework of the IST PHOENIX project (www.ist-phoenix.org). After a description of the considered cross-layer approach and of the information to be exchanged among the system component blocks, the concept of "JSCC/D controllers" is introduced. Results obtained through the demonstrator realized as proof-of-concept for the described paradigm are then shown, confirming the validity of the described joint optimization approach

/pdf/content-adaptive-network-aware-joint-optimization-of-2j33qjpu8z.pdf

Content adaptive network aware joint optimization of wireless video transmission

Multimedia transmission has to handle a variety of compressed and uncompressed source signals such as data, text, image, audio, and video. On wireless channels the error rates are high and joint source/channel coding and decoding methods are advantageous. Also, the system architecture has to adapt to the bad channel conditions. Several examples of a joint design are given. We especially advocate the use of rate-compatible punctured systematic recursive convolutional (RCPRSC) codes which are show to lead to a straightforward and versatile unequal error protection (UEP) design. In addition, the high-end receiver could use soft outputs and source-controlled channel decoding for even better performance.

J. Hagenauer

Papers

Channel coding and transmission aspects for wireless multimedia