Refined error concealment for multiple state video coding over ad hoc networks

Providing reliable end-to-end video communications over wireless ad-hoc networks is a challenging problem due to the highly dynamic topology of the ad-hoc networks and the unreliable wireless channels. Multiple description coding (MDC) with path diversity is often proposed to maintain connectivity but the challenge is to match the chosen MDC method with an effective error concealment scheme. The paper proposes refined error concealment (REC) methods on a macroblock (MB) basis for a popular MDC method called multiple state video coding (MSVC) to improve the transmitted video quality over the lossy networks. The performance of the MSVC method with refined error concealment (MSVC_REC) is evaluated over a two-hop two-path wireless ad-hoc network model. When compared to MSVC and single description coding (SDC), MSVC_REC is shown to provide better PSNR performance over the wireless ad-hoc network with both burst and random losses.