engleski

Bit-stream allocation methods for scalable video coding supporting wireless communications

The demand for video access services through wireless networks, as important parts of larger heterogeneous networks, is constantly increasing. To cope with this demand, flexible compression technology to enable optimum coding performance, especially at low bit-rates, is required. In this context, scalable video coding emerges as the most promising technology. A critical problem in wavelet-based scalable video coding is bit-stream allocation at any bit-rate and in particular when low bit-rates are targeted. In this paper two methods for bit-stream allocation based on the concept of fractional bit-planes are reported. The first method assumes that minimum rate-distortion (R-D) slope of the same fractional bit-plane within the same bit-plane across different subbands is higher than or equal to the maximum R-D slope of the next fractional bit-plane. This method is characterised by a very low complexity since no distortion evaluation is required. Contrasting this approach, in the second method the distortion caused by quantisation of the wavelet coefficients is considered. Here, a simple yet effective statistical distortion model that is used for estimation of R-D slopes for each fractional bit-plane is derived. Three different strategies are derived from this method. In the first one it is assumed that the used wavelet is nearly orthogonal, i.e. the distortion in the transform domain is treated as being equivalent to the distortion in the signal domain. To reduce the error caused by direct distortion evaluation in the wavelet domain, the weighting factors are applied to the used statistical distortion model in the second strategy. In the last strategy, the derived statistical model is used during the bit-plane encoding to determine optimal position of the fractional bit-plane corresponding to refinement information in the compressed bit-stream. Results of selected experiments measuring peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) of decoded video at various bit-rates are reported. Additionally, the PSNR of decoded video at various bit-rates is measured for two specific cases: when the methods for bit-stream allocation are used to assign quality layers in the compressed bit-stream, and when quality layers are not assigned.

bit-plane coding; embedded coding; fractional bit-plane ordering; low bit-rate coding; post-compression rate-distortion optimization; scalable video coding

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