MIMO Wireless Channel for Video Communications using Distributed Video Coding

The research on distributed video coding (DVC) has been increasingly popular in recent times due to its promising features. DVC primarily has a modified complexity balance between the encoder and decoder, in contrast to conventional video codecs. In video communications over wireless channels, the noise and multipath fading effects have a significant effect on the perceptual video quality experienced at the decoder. However, it is noted that in all the research literature on DVC, an error-free ideal communication channel is assumed between the encoder and decoder. In this paper, we take into account the effects of noise and fading in a wireless channel on the performance of a DVC codec with necessary modifications to the decoding algorithm while proposing a higher order (4x4) MIMO based diversity scheme to take advantage of the multipath propagation effects to improve the performance. Simulation results show that the proposed DVC system outperform the state of the art H.264 video codec at low SNR levels.