Protection modes for segmented video streaming over broadband wireless

Segmented or data-partitioned H.264/AVC codec video streaming separates-out important information from the compressed bitstream and places it into separate packets. Because of the damaging impact of error bursts on real-time video streams, it has become common to apply application-layer forward error correction (FEC) for transport over broadband wireless access networks, herein IEEE 802.16e. In this paper an adaptive FEC scheme using Raptor coding is applied to segmented video. The paper sets out to answer the question whether equal or unequal error protection is preferable in that situation. Though UEP offers a reduction in bitrate there are multiple dB gains in video quality, which will prove attractive to end-users, if equal error protection is provided. Overhead from using EEP rather than UEP was found to be about 1% of the overall bitrate.