Joint source-channel coding with partially coded index assignment for robust scalable video

A scalable video coder consisting of motion-compensated temporal filtering coupled with structured vector quantization plus a linear mapping of quantizer indexes that minimizes simultaneously source and channel distortions is presented. The linear index assignment takes the form of either a direct, uncoded mapping or a coded mapping via Reed-Muller codes. Experimental results compare the proposed system to a similar scheme using unstructured vector quantization as well as to a prominent scalable video coder protected by more traditional convolutional codes. The proposed system consistently outperforms the other two schemes by a significant margin for very noisy channel conditions.