A novel packetisation scheme for MPEG-4 over 3G wireless systems

In this paper, a new packetisation method for MPEG-4 video packets is proposed and analysed. This packetisation method is based on a new header compression scheme to compress headers of MPEG-4 video packets for streaming over UMTS. MPEG-4 header compression not only makes more efficient use of scarce wireless bandwidth but it also improves the perceptual video quality and error robustness. In particular, it makes recovery from errors faster. MPEG-4 video packet headers contribute a significant portion of video packet size, particularly when resynchronisation, header extension code and data partitioning error resilience options are switched on. The new header compression scheme is aimed at reducing the MPEG-4 video packet overheads and optimising the packetisation method for enhanced robustness. Preliminary results obtained from the experiments for this approach show an improvement in objective quality of up to 5 dB, apart from the considerable savings in bandwidth. This paper focuses on the packetisation method for MPEG-4 video packets and features the improvements made for video quality achieved by the defined packetisation scheme.