Network-Adaptive Frame-Expansion-Based Packet Video Coding for Erasure Channels

This paper proposes a novel error-resilient packet video coding method which is designed to operate on unreliable IP networks suffering from large bursts of packet losses. The main novelties of the proposed system are: (1) A Bayesian packet loss predictor is employed to dynamically predict the packet loss probabilities; (2) A harmonic frame-expansion is applied to the video stream to add error-resilience. This includes dynamically choosing the size of the expansions. (3) Error-propagation is reduced by filtering out error-prone high-frequency components from reference images. This means that the proposed video codec method does not need to switch between the inter and intra coding modes. (4) Theoretical analysis of the video performance is given. Our preliminary simulations have shown that the frame expansion method can provide excellent resilience to video packet losses. The system has generated high quality videos at low bit-rates (64kbs) on simulated networks with the packet loss probability ranging from 5% to 20%. Visual inspection has shown that under similar PSNRs, the resulting videos have noticeable less visual artifacts as compared with those from the conventional codecs