An N+1 redundant GOP based FEC algorithm for improving Streaming Video Quality due to Packet Loss and Delay Jitter

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges in deploying streaming video content over wireless is the existence of random packet loss and delay variance (jitter). Due to the nature of real-time transmissions, packet retransmission is not always the preferred viable solution to this problem. Retransmission based error recovery schemes add overhead in terms of time taken for packets retransmissions, which can lead to undesirable packet delays, resulting in video quality degradation. In this paper we propose an error resilient coding scheme using Forward Error Correction (FEC), by encoding every next I-frame as an extra Predictive P-frame as a part of the preceding Group of Pictures (GOP), thus virtually making the GOP size N+1, but adding selective redundancy to the video stream. This scheme for adding redundancy to selected frames in the video transmission makes them less susceptible to errors and thus makes the video stream more robust towards error propagation.