End-to-end power-optimized video communication over wireless channels

Video communication over a wireless link is a very challenging task due to the time-varying characteristics of the wireless channel and limited battery resources in the handheld devices. This paper proposes an end-to-end power-optimized approach for video communication. The power consumed in complexity-reconfigurable source coding, channel-adaptive unequal error protection (UEP), and video transmission is analyzed. Power-minimized rate allocation is presented to achieve the minimal power consumption in the mobile host while maintaining the desired video quality. Simulation results show that our power-optimized scheme achieves significant power saving compared to the existing scheme