Multiple hierarchical image transmission over wireless channels

In this paper, we present a multiple hierarchical coding and transmission scheme in which both the fragile structure of set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) source coding and the unequal importance of bits in the coded bitstream have been taken into account. Multiple subsampling is applied to split the wavelet coeffcients of the original image source into multiple subsources so that each subsource is a crude representation of the original image. The sequential dependence of coded bitstream is broken. As a result, the error propagation is limited to a single subsource which is also coded with SPIHT to achieve desired coding performance. Cyclic redundancy coder/rate compatible punctured convolutional coder (CRC/RCPC) channel coding has been used to offer unequal error protection (UEP) to the multiple coded bitstreams. In each substream all the bits in the same bit layer are protected with the same channel code. The higher the bit-layer, the more the channel coding protects. Experimented results show that this new scheme has a good error resilient performance over wireless channels with time varying and bursty errors characteristics. In particular the reconstructed images often demonstrate good visual quality.