Enhanced error resilience of video communications for burst losses using an extended ROPE algorithm

Video communications over wireless networks suffers various patterns of losses, including burst losses that cause great degradation in video quality. In this paper, we propose an algorithm based on recursive optimal per-pixel estimate (ROPE) to accurately estimate the overall distortion accounting for the loss pattern. The estimated distortion is applied to the rate-distortion (RD)-based mode selection to provide the optimal tradeoff between intra and inter coding. Simulation results show that in lossy networks, the proposed extended ROPE algorithm achieves gains in average PSNR and PSNR_r,f by up to 0.8 dB and 3.6 dB respectively. This shows that the proposed algorithm can enhance error resilience for video communications over networks with burst losses.