Robust wireless image transmission using jointly-optimized modulation and source coding

An orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is an effective technique for high data rate transmission over wideband multipath fading channels. A robust image transmission system is proposed, based on a Reed-Solomon (RS) coded 16-QAM OFDM scheme. This system comprises a vector quantization (VQ) source encoder with a compression rate of 16. The data is encoded using a Reed-Solomon block code and mapped onto a 16-QAM constellation. The parameters of the codebook have been optimized for 16-QAM. It is shown, through simulations, that the combination of OFDM and Reed-Solomon coding makes the system robust to errors. Results indicate that the joint optimization of source coding and QAM minimizes the visual artifacts that result from channel induced errors.