Error control for still image transmission over a fading channel

Due to the widespread increase of wireless access users through wireless LAN or cellular radio, the demand for image transmission over a multipath fading channel is increasing rapidly. However, the channel is generally very unreliable and produces burst errors due to the time-varying fading. The effect of automatic repeat request (ARQ) error control on the highly data-compressed still image transmission is studied. By classifying bits of the compressed image into groups of different importance or sensitivity, those bits in the more important classes are transmitted with a higher priority. Based on computer simulation, we have confirmed that the proposed scheme achieves a higher image transmission quality than the conventional ARQ.