An unequal error protection method for packet loss resilient 3D mesh transmission

A packet-loss resilient, bandwidth-scalable 3D graphics streaming system is proposed. It uses the compressed progressive mesh (CPM) algorithm (see Pajarola, R. and Rossignac, J., IEEE Trans. on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol.6, no.1, p.79-93, 2000) to generate a hierarchical bit-stream to represent different levels of details (LODs). We assign forward error correction (FEC) codes to each layer in the encoded bit-stream according to its importance. To this end, we develop a new distortion measure that quantifies the distortion in the reconstructed mesh when part of the bit-stream is lost. Experimental results with a collection of 3D meshes have been conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of our solution. They indicate that with our proposed unequal error protection (UEP), the decoded mesh quality degrades more gracefully, compared to either no error protection (NEP) or equal error protection (EEP) methods, as the packet loss rate increases.