Bit allocation for joint source/channel coding of scalable video

We propose an efficient bit allocation algorithm for a joint source/channel video codec over noisy channels. Our approach is to distribute the available source and channel coding bits among the subbands in such a way that the expected distortion is minimized. The constructed distortion curves bound the performance degradation should the channel be estimated incorrectly. The algorithm can be used in other similar distortion minimization problems with two constraints, such as power or complexity.