Modelling H.264/AVC sensivitity for error protection in wireless transmissions

A simple method is proposed to optimise the protection levels on the different parts of an H.264/AVC bitstream for transmission over an error-prone channel. This method relies on a semi-analytical model of the video stream sensitivity, that allows to predict the resulting distortion depending on the channel errors viewed by the video decoder. Valid for a frame, a partition or a group of pictures (GOP) by taking into account the dependencies existing between partitions and frames, the model allows to set the adapted protection for each partition or frame to minimise the overall sequence distortion for a given erroneous context by joint source channel optimisation of the compression and protection mechanisms. The method is then applied to determine the best trade-off of channel and source coding rates for a given operating point or protection rate, with equal or unequal error protection