Robust video transmission over binary symmetric channels with packet erasures

A video transmission system is presented based on the 3D SPIHT (set partitioning in hierarchical trees) algorithm for video compression and turbo codes for channel error protection. The channel considered is a binary symmetric channel with packet erasures, used for modeling the concatenation of a congested wired link followed by a noisy wireless hop. Unequal error protection with turbo codes is used to provide strong channel protection, with rate allocation performed by a Viterbi-based algorithm. The received video quality degrades gracefully in the presence of channel errors.