Joint error-resilient video source coding and FEC code rate optimization for an AWGN channel

A joint source-channel rate-distortion (RD) optimization is proposed for video communication systems. The source coding and channel coding options are optimized by seeking the best trade-off between the estimated end-to-end distortion of a video packet and the sum of the number of source bits and forward error correction bits used to encode that packet. The proposed RD algorithm controls the total bit rate by using a Lagrange multiplier. Compared to conventional RD optimization schemes, which only optimize over the source coding modes of macroblocks, our proposed RD algorithm achieves superior performance over an AWGN channel.