Error concealment aware streaming video system over packet-based mobile networks

A compressed video bitstream is extremely sensitive to errors when it is transmitted via networks with bursty packet loss such as 3G and mobile WiMAX. Error concealment techniques have been used to improve the recovered picture quality in cases in which parts of the coded picture are not available at the decoder for reconstruction. However, most conventional error concealment methods show low image reconstruction performance due to unavailable motion information about image blocks during burst packet loss, and require high energy consumption to find the best error concealment method in the receiver. The proposed error concealment aware error resilient streaming video system has an intelligent error concealment selector. The method recommends the best error concealment method per macroblock, by additionally transmitting its error concealment selection codes to the decoder. The streaming client conceals the corrupted MB via the chosen error concealment method, with low energy consumption, even when the frame loss is bursty. The experimental results show that the system is highly effective, in terms of the video quality and energy consumption, at the cost of a slight overhead for transmitted bit streams.