Adaptive GOP-length Multiple Representation Coding for error-resilient video delivery

Multiple Representation Coding (MRC) is a novel scheme that can enable error-resilient video delivery over channels prone to burst or signal losses. In the MRC scheme, the source video is decomposed into multiple independently decodable representations. These multiple representations are then transmitted as a single video stream using a `GOP interleaving' (GOP: Group of Pictures) mechanism. The GOP interleaver disperses the multiple representations within the transmitted stream so that the spatio-temporally co-located segments of the sequence belonging to different representations are not simultaneously impaired by the same burst loss. When the transmitted bitstream is impaired by a burst loss spanning multiple frames, the MRC scheme can give a PSNR gain on the order of 2-4 dBs over the conventional full-size encoding and transmission of the video. Further, the error-robustness of the MRC scheme can be improved by increasing the length of the representation segments interleaved in the transmitted stream. In this paper, we propose adapting the GOP-length of individual representations in response to the expected length of the burst loss over the network. Simulation results demonstrate that the adaptive MRC scheme can give a PSNR gain of around 2 dB over the non-adaptive MRC scheme, in presence of long burst errors or signal loss intervals.