Real-time forward error correction for video transmission

When the video streams are transmitted over the unreliable networks, forward error correction (FEC) codes are usually used to protect them. Reed-Solomon codes are block-based FEC codes. On one hand, enlarging the block size can enhance the performance of the Reed- Solomon codes. On the other hand, large Reed-Solomon block size leads to long delay which is not tolerable for real-time video applications. In this paper a novel approach is proposed to improve the performance of Reed-Solomon codes. With the proposed approach, more than one video frame are encompassed in the Reed-Solomon coding block yet no delay is introduced. Experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms other real-time error resilient video coding technologies.