Error-resilient multiple-description video coding with 3-D SPIHT

Abstract

We propose an error-resilient multiple-description (MD) video coding algorithm based on three-dimensional (3-D) Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees (SPIHT). In this approach, the wavelet transform coefficients are divided into multiple independent substreams that are separately transmitted over error-prone networks. Compared to other MD video coders based on 3-D SPIHT, the novelty of the proposed approach is the injection of additional redundancy into the substreams so that the coefficients in the spatial root subband are protected highly during the transmission. As a consequence, spatial root subband coefficients that are missing due to transmission errors are recovered at the decoder with a high accuracy. Simulation results on different video sequences show that the proposed method maintains error resilience with high coding efficiency. In particular, our results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves a significant improvement on video quality by up to 3.35 dB in the presence of a substream loss compared to the existing MD video coders that use 3-D SPIHT.