Multiple description image coding: A low complexity approach for lossy networks

The development of an efficient and reliable multiple descriptions coding (MDC) scheme over lossy communication networks has been described. The advantage of MDC is that, if all the channels work, a high quality, possibly lossless, reconstruction can be achieved from all the received descriptions. On the other hand, a lower but still acceptable quality can be achieved if some of the channels are not received at all. In this article, a general framework of an efficient multiple description robust communication system with 2- and 4-channel cases is presented with a proposed block-based DC reallocation approach using intrinsic correlation. The peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), mean squared error (MSE), bit rate, and entropy are calculated with the proposed method to analyze the reconstruction quality and the calculated results are compared with those of the other MDC methods. It is found that the proposed method, which uses an intrinsic correlation, gives comprehensive improvements over the other recently developed methods.