Distributed video coding without channel codes

Distributed video coding allows the compression of video frames in a distributed fashion leading to a rather simple computational encoding, but requiring a complex decoding. The main drawback however is the decoding complexity making some practical applications difficult. Nowadays, most distributed video coding schemes are based on efficient channel codes such as LDPC and Turbo codes. This is the main cause of the decoder's high complexity. This paper proposes a new distributed video coding scheme that can avoid the use of such codes. It is based on an adaptive representation of the source frames combined with a DC-guided scheme. This combination can reduce the data that need to be transmitted from the encoder to the decoder. This subsequently allows complex channel coding to be replaced by simple entropic coding methods, such as arithmetic source coding, with little performance degradation. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the performance compared to conventional distributed video coding schemes, while enabling a much lower computational complex decoder.