Robust Video Streaming over Power Lines

The upcoming HomePlug AV standard enables power line communication (PLC) networks to transmit high quality video streams applicable for various video on demand and video relay services in digital homes. However, video streaming over power lines is sensitive to the interference caused by electrical appliances and to the degradation of quality of service (QoS) caused by the increase of transmission distance. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of power line communications for video streaming under various conditions. We also propose a new multiple-description based video coding (MDC) technique for robust video streaming over power lines. This technique divides the video into an even-frame stream and an odd-frame stream in the server. Each stream is composed of two substreams, one at full resolution and the other at quarter resolution. The four substreams are encoded independently and transmitted in an interleaving manner. If packet losses occur in one substream, the decoder can compensate for the lost video by making use of the other substreams so as to maintain the output video quality.