Scalable Video Broadcasting Using Bit Division Multiplexing

Scalable extension to the H.264/AVC video compression standard (SVC) enables one or more subset bit streams (layers) with multiple qualities to be contained in one high-quality video bit stream, which is a good solution for simultaneous transmission of video programs with different qualities. To fulfill the target of scalable video broadcasting (SVB), the transmission of SVC in broadcasting system uses the physical layer sub-channel technique, and different layers are transmitted in different sub-channels. Bit division multiplexing (BDM) is a newly proposed physical layer sub-channel technique at bit level, which could achieve higher transmission efficiency than conventional time division multiplexing scheme and improve the flexibility of the broadcasting system in conventional hierarchical modulation. In this paper, the combination of SVC and BDM technique is proposed and implemented for SVB. In addition, simplified BDM scheme, BDM-Lite, is also investigated for SVB, which significantly decreases the demapping complexity of the baseline layer due to high-order modulation, which is highly desirable for mobile/handheld receivers. Both simulation and FPGA implementation results show that the proposed BDM-Lite scheme has the advantages of both high transmission efficiency and low complexity of baseline reception.