High definition wireless video transmission using Pyramid Vector Quantisation

Video Source encoders such as H.264 and VC-1 are in common use today and provide impressive compression performance. These use variable length coding and predictive coding to achieve high compression ratios but as a consequence render the encoded bitstream extremely sensitive to channel errors. In this paper we revisit an alternative technique, Pyramid Vector Quantisation, which generates fixed length codes. Intra mode PVQ is presented as a means of robustly compressing and wirelessly transmitting HD Video. The paper shows that PVQ is an effective codec for indoor wireless transmission of HD video. Comparing the required channel SNR for an H.264 based system with a PVQ based system shows that PVQ can operate at a much lower SNR (with gains of up to 11 dB) while still providing excellent video quality and compression performance.