Efficient error control scheme for video streaming over wireless networks

Recently, successful video streaming over wireless channels has received more and more attentions. However, wireless video streaming is a challenging task because of limited bandwidth, time-varying error-prone environment and stringent quality of service requirements. In this paper, an efficient low-delay and robust error control scheme is proposed for wireless video communications. This architecture uses a hybrid approach that dynamically combines unequal error protection (UEP) and automatic repeat request (ARQ) to balance trade-offs between delay constraint and error protection requirements. In UEP, the bitstream is divided into two groups and is reorganized into a fixed length structure to reduce the side information and channel decoding delay. The ARQ scheme takes the strict delay constraint into account. Based on a preset delay bound, it utilizes the receiver initiated mechanisms to determine whether a retransmission request will be sent out. Simulations show that the proposed error control scheme significantly improves the video quality.