A cross-layer MV-HEVC depth-texture rate allocation estimation technique in 3GPP LTE systems

Abstract

This paper presents a cross-layer depth-texture target bit rate allocation estimation technique for the transmission of Multiview High Efficiency Video Coding (MV-HEVC) texture plus depth content over 3GPP LTE systems. The proposed technique is based on a statistical model which exploits the texture and depth map image characteristics to estimate the optimal depth-texture rate allocation to be used by the codec's rate control algorithm. Experiments using standard test sequences show the effectiveness of the proposed technique as the model is able to estimate, on-line, the optimal depth-texture rate allocation with a mean absolute estimation error of 3.3% and a standard deviation of 2.2%. In addition, the proposed cross-layer architecture allows the depth-texture rate allocation to be adapted to both the video content characteristics and the available bandwidth offered by the wireless network making it suitable for the transmission of multiview 3D video to mobile devices.