A joint channel estimation and unequal error protection scheme for image transmission in wireless OFDM systems

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation, adopted by the digital video broadcasting (DVB-T) standard, has been recognized for its good performance for high data rate wireless communications. Therefore, the study of the robust transmission of multimedia data over OFDM systems has attracted extensive research interests. In the past, channel estimation, which is an important aspect in OFDM systems, has not been exploited for multimedia transmission. When using the block training based channel estimation, OFDM data blocks experience unequal decoding error rate due to the imprecision of channel estimation. We use this property to provide unequal error protection (UEP) for transmission of SPIHT coded images. Compared with the systems using pilot training channel estimation schemes, which are recommended in the DVB-T standard, the proposed scheme improves the PSNR of reconstructed images by up to 2 dB.