Robust Network FEC-Embedded Video Transmission Over Error-Prone Wireless Channels

Abstract

Most wireless networks incline to include FEC code (Forward error correction) to recover the corrupted packets without retransmission. The sequential packets transmitted over wireless channel are likely to be infected with various errors like noise or deep fading. In this paper, therefore, a frame-level FEC is added across packets at the application layer to define two analytical packet loss models. At the network layer level, Gilbert Elliot Model (GEM) and Extended Gilbert Model (EGM) are considered to characterize the MPEG-4 packets loss over the bursty error-prone wireless channels. The resultant video quality in terms of playable frame rate (PFR) is estimated at the client end when using the underlying TCP-Friendly protocol. Numerical results point out that the EGM-FEC model introduces a robust measure in estimating the perceived video quality in particular at higher packet loss rate and lower effect of packet correlation. Moreover, it is also found that the GEM-FEC model outperforms EGM-FEC but when ignoring the effect of packet correlation.