Unequal error protection for transmission of JPEG2000 codestreams over noisy channels

A method for joint source/channel rate allocation for transmission of JPEG2000 (J2K) codestreams over noisy channels is proposed. The rate allocation method uses the BER statistics of different channel codes and the rate-distortion characteristics of the source generated by the J2K encoder. The features of the J2K codestream are utilized to form a multilayer codestream and an unequal amount of protection is applied to each layer. The proposed method is capable of accommodating different channel coding strategies. Experimental results indicate that the presented method compares favorably with methods existing in the literature.