Rate-distortion optimized hybrid error control for real-time packetized video transmission

The problem of application-layer error control for real-time video transmission over packet lossy networks is commonly addressed via joint source-channel coding (JSCC), where source coding and forward error correction (FEC) are jointly designed to compensate for packet losses. In this paper, we consider hybrid application-layer error correction consisting of FEC and retransmissions. The study is carried out in an integrated joint source-channel coding (IJSCC) framework, where error resilient source coding, channel coding, and error concealment are jointly considered in order to achieve the best video delivery quality. We first show the advantage of the proposed IJSCC framework as compared to a sequential JSCC approach, where error resilient source coding and channel coding are not fully integrated. In the IJSCC framework, we also study the performance of different error control scenarios, such as pure FEC, pure retransmission, and their combination. Pure FEC and application layer retransmissions are shown to each achieve optimal results depending on the packet loss rates and the round-trip time. A hybrid of FEC and retransmissions is shown to outperform each component individually due to its greater flexibility.