PRISM: an error-resilient video coding paradigm for wireless networks

We describe PRISM (power-efficient, robust, high-compression, syndrome-based multimedia coding), an error-resilient video-coding paradigm built on the principles of distributed source coding from multi-user information theory. PRISM represents a radical departure from the current state-of-the-art video coding architectures, like MPEG, that are based on a motion-compensated prediction framework. These are hampered by: (i) a rigid computational complexity partition between encoder (heavy) and decoder (light); and (U) high fragility to drift between encoder and decoder in the face of prediction mismatch due to channel loss. In contrast, PRISM's architectural goals are: (i) to have a channel-adaptive distribution of computational complexity between encoder and decoder; and (ii) to have built-in robustness to drift between encoder and decoder due to wireless channel loss. These features make PRISM ideally suited for low-latency multimedia transmission over wireless networks, particularly for uplink-rich applications.