An extension to the PRO-MPEG COP3 codes for unequal error protection of real-time video transmission

We propose and evaluate an extension to the Application-Layer FEC (AL-FEC) codes introduced by the Pro-MPEG Forum in its Code of Practice 3 r2 (Pro-MPEG COP3 codes), consisting in allowing the use of a number of matrices of dissimilar size per FEC block. So, unequal protection of the data packets in the video stream is enabled, since dissimilar code rates can be applied to different groups of data packets. This boosts the efficiency of the protection scheme, increasing the video quality of the sequence presented to final users, even if the resulting packet loss rate (PLR) after channel decoding remains the same. Evaluation results show a significantly better performance of the Pro-MPEG COP3 codes when the proposed protection extension is incorporated.