Enhancing visual quality in mobile multimedia

The success of future generations of wireless technology will depend on their capability to provide reliable access to multimedia networks. Methods to diminish unpredictable channel errors in high-resolution applications, such as video telephony, are likely to dominate future research and development activities. Existing approaches based on intra-frame refreshing and error-correcting codes only achieve limited channel-error concealment. The functionality of the human visual system is expected to be a significant influence on the development of new methods and algorithms for mobile multimedia applications. Approaches exploiting the contrast ratio and the spatial and temporal frequency and motion properties of the human visual system to reduce quality degradation and propagate the errors to insensitive areas are some of the prime candidates for consideration. Future research directions need also to consider efficient implementations of the devised algorithms to meet the requirements for low-complexity and low-power consumption designs for mobile multimedia coders.