Scalable Modulation for Video Transmission in Wireless Networks

In conventional wireless systems with layered architectures, the physical (PHY) layer equally treats all data streams from the upper layers and applies the same modulation and coding schemes to them. Newer systems such as Digital Video Broadcast start to introduce hierarchical modulation schemes with SuperPosition Coding (SPC) and support data streams of different priorities. However, SPC requires specialized hardware and has high complexity, which is not desirable for handheld devices. In this paper, we propose scalable modulation (s-mod) by reusing the current mainstream modulation schemes with software-based bit remapping. The performance evaluation has shown that s-mod can achieve the same and, in some cases, even better performance than SPC with much lower complexity. We further propose how to optimize the configuration of the PHY-layer s-mod and coding schemes to maximize the utility of video streaming with scalable video coding (SVC). Simulation results demonstrate substantial performance gains using s-mod and cross-layer optimization, indicating that s-mod and SVC are a good combination for video transmission in wireless networks.