A Novel Design and Modeling of UEP-Based Compressed Video Broadcasting With Multilevel Coded Modulation

Abstract

A novel coded modulation system design that maximizes the average quality of multimedia data, received by a given set of target users, is proposed for compressed video broadcasting based on unequal error protection. An integrated source and channel coding system with graceful degradation is introduced, where the multilevel coded modulation (MLC) with capacity-approaching codes is combined with an existing source compression technique. By assigning critical information that is required for decoding compressed data to the levels of MLC with higher reliability, we demonstrate that graceful degradation can be naturally incorporated into practical video broadcasting systems. Furthermore, a new measure of achievable average receiver quality, i.e., the quality of the received videos averaged over the users located within the coverage area of a given broadcasting service, is introduced. Based on the proposed measure, an optimal rate allocation algorithm for MLC, utilizing the code rate design based on channel capacity rule, is developed. In the case of MPEG-4 video coding, our numerical results reveal that a well-designed MLC system can achieve higher average quality experienced by target users than the conventional coded modulation as well as hierarchical modulation systems for a given coverage area.