A full-featured, error-resilient, scalable wavelet video codec based on the set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) algorithm

Compressed video bitstreams require protection from channel errors in a wireless channel. The 3-D set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) coder has proved its efficiency and its real-time capability in the compression of video. A forward-error-correcting (FEC) channel (RCPC) code combined with a single automatic-repeat request (ARQ) proved to be an effective means for protecting the bitstream. There were two problems with this scheme: (1) the noiseless reverse channel ARQ may not be feasible in practice and (2) in the absence of channel coding and ARQ, the decoded sequence was hopelessly corrupted even for relatively clean channels. We eliminate the need for ARQ by making the 3-D SPIHT bitstream more robust and resistant to channel errors. We first break the wavelet transform into a number of spatio-temporal tree blocks which can be encoded and decoded independently by the 3-D SPIHT algorithm. This procedure brings the added benefit of parallelization of the compression and decompression algorithms, and enables implementation of region-based coding. We demonstrate the packetization of the bitstream and the reorganization of these packets to achieve scalability in bit rate and/or resolution in addition to robustness. Then we encode each packet with a channel code. Not only does this protect the integrity of the packets in most cases, but it also allows detection of packet-decoding failures, so that only the cleanly recovered packets are reconstructed. In extensive comparative tests, the reconstructed video is shown to be superior to that of MPEG-2, with the margin of superiority growing substantially as the channel becomes noisier. Furthermore, the parallelization makes possible real-time implementation in hardware and software.