Unequal Growth Codes: Intermediate Performance and Unequal Error Protection for Video Streaming

Abstract

We investigate the design of fountain codes with good intermediate performance and built-in unequal error protection for low-delay video multicast. In particular, we design novel short-blocklength fountain codes for media streaming applications to multiple heterogeneous receivers and analyze their performance. Our theoretical contribution is the generalization of the growth code analysis for unequal error protection to suit the characteristics of video data. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively increase the number of decodable packets over a very wide range of packet drop rates and provide smooth and graceful video quality degradation for users with various channel conditions. The proposed scheme also enjoys the important benefits of much lower decoder complexity and simpler system architecture compared to traditional MDS erasure coding based solutions.