Wireless video transmission using multiple description codes combined with prioritized DCT compression

In this paper, we provide a new scheme for transmission of video information over wireless channels. This scheme is constructed by combining the prioritized discrete cosine transform (DCT) for video compression with multiple description codes based on forward error correction (FEC) codes. Reed-Solomon codes with different error correction abilities are applied to different parts of the progressive source bitstream, and finally these blocks are split into several equal descriptions for transmission. The prioritized DCT coder gives a wonderful progressive feature with less complexity and can be easily combined with the FEC based multiple description generation. We demonstrate via simulation that this scheme can improve the robustness of video transmission over wireless channels and allow video quality to degrade gracefully as channel conditions worsen.