H.264/AVC intra-only coding (iAVC) techniques for video over wireless networks

Abstract

The requirement to transmit video data over unreliable wireless networks (with the possibility of packet loss) is anticipated in the foreseeable future. Significant compression ratio and error resilience are both needed for complex applications including tele-operated robotics, vehicle-mounted cameras, sensor network, etc. Block-matching based inter-frame coding techniques, including MPEG-4 and H.264/AVC, do not perform well in these scenarios due to error propagation between frames. Many wireless applications often use intra-only coding technologies such as Motion-JPEG, which exhibit better recovery from network data loss at the price of higher data rates. In order to address these research issues, an intra-only coding scheme of H.264/AVC (iAVC) is proposed. In this approach, each frame is coded independently as an I-frame. Frame copy is applied to compensate for packet loss. This approach is a good balance between compression performance and error resilience. It achieves compression performance comparable to Motion- JPEG2000 (MJ2), with lower complexity. Error resilience similar to Motion-JPEG (MJ) will also be accomplished. Since the intra-frame prediction with iAVC is strictly confined within the range of a slice, memory usage is also extremely low. Low computational complexity and memory usage are very crucial to mobile stations and devices in wireless network.