Is fine-granular scalable video coding beneficial for wireless video applications?

In this work we compare standard-compliant H.264 video transmission with an efficient fine granular scalable coding method based on H. 264, the progressive texture video coding (PTVC) scheme in a wireless conversational application environment. Therefore, we operate on a simple but meaningful wireless channel model, the block-fading AWGN channel. This model is suitable to represent wireless transmission conditions with respect to time-variance and resource limitations. Suitable error control schemes based on punctured high-memory conventional codes and appropriate decoding methods are applied. Rate-control based on rate-distortion criteria allows selecting optimized source and channel coding rates for both video-coding schemes. In addition, the exploitation of network feedback - typically available in conversational services - is employed using NEWPRED techniques. A fair comparison of the systems shows that the standard-compliant non-scalable system outperforms the advanced scalable systems in terms of average decoded PSNR. The benefits of the scalable system are discussed and also presented via experimental results.