Time-distortion optimized forward error correction for delay-sensitive wireless multimedia transmission

Providing end-to-end reliability for data transmission is still an intractable challenge for delay-sensitive wireless multimedia networks. This paper deals with an unequal error protection (UEP) scheme for scalable video delivery over packet-lossy networks using forward error correction (FEC). The proposed cross-layer approach allows the wireless multimedia networks to jointly optimize the application layer and the error protection strategies available at the lower layers. The redundancy is tuned in accordance with both the wireless channel condition (as indicated by symbol error rate) and the time limit (as indicated by parity budget). Simulations demonstrate that the proposed cross-layer grouping scheme can significantly improve video transmission quality by allocating more correction bits to the vital frames, while the time constraint is satisfied and the complexity associated with performing this group allocation algorithm is reduced.