Cross-layer feedback-based resilient coding for video transmission over uplink cellular network

Delivering real-time video over 3G cellular networks is an important component of mobile multimedia applications. Since hybrid coded video is very vulnerable to channel disturbances, the unavoidable burst frame losses when transmitting video over cellular network will cause severe quality degradation. It has been found that feedback channel combined multiframe is an effective tool to enhance error resilience for the wireless video communication. However, this method is affected by the long time delay of the feedback message greatly. In this paper, a novel error resilient video coding scheme for the uplink video applications over cellular networks is proposed. Unlike existing schemes, the proposed scheme adopts a radio link layer agent at the sender to implement the cross-layer feedback: get the frame losses information (by prediction or active time-out frame discarding) and send it to the application (APP) layer to adapt the encoder well to the varying channels. Experiments results show that the proposed scheme can improve both the coding efficiency and the error resilience of the uplink cellular video communication significantly.