A novel Wavelet-domain slice group unit for H.264 Flexible Macroblock Ordering and its embedded implementation

Evolved from conventional Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) that is coded out of raster sequence in spatial domain, this paper presents Wavelet-domain slice group partition and unequal error protection for H.264/AVC video communication. In detail, this paper develops Wavelet-based FMO (WFMO) algorithm to adaptively allocate macroblocks into 4 slice groups based on Reverse Biorthogonal (rbio) Wavelet transform, and then adopts unequal Reed-Solomon error correction to enhance the robustness of the packet carrying the slice group of most significance and psychovisual sensitivity. Experimental results show H.264/AVC codec with proposed rbio WFMO can achieve the best subjective and objective video quality under various packet loss conditions (except for a few 0% packet loss cases), against H.264/AVC codec without FMO and with conventional FMO. On the other hand, a DaVinci embedded platform implementation of H.264/AVC surveillance camera featuring WFMO is accomplished. Implementation results demonstrate it is reliable under error-prone network environments and feasible for embedded real-time applications.