Spatial Multiple Description Coding for Scalable Video Streams

Abstract

The need for adapting video stream delivery over heterogeneous and unreliable networks requires self-adaptive and error resilient coding. Network bandwidth fluctuations can be handled by means of a video coding scheme which adapts to the channel conditions. However, packet losses which are frequent in wireless networks can cause a mismatch during the reconstruction in the receiver end and result in an accumulation of errors which deteriorates the quality of the delivered video. A combination of multiple description coding in pixel domain and scalable video coding schemes which addresses both video adaptation and robustness to data loss is proposed in this paper. The proposed scheme combines error concealment with spatial video scalability. In order to improve the fidelity of the reconstructed to the original frames in presence of packet loss, a multilayer polyphase spatial decomposition algorithmis proposed. Classical multiple description methods interpolate themissing data which results in smoothing and artifact at object boundaries. The proposed algorithm addresses the quality degradation due to low-pass filtering effect of interpolation methods.We also comparatively analyze the trade-off between robustness to channel errors and coding efficiency.