A distance-based slice interleaving scheme for robust video transmission over error-prone networks

Video transmission over wireless networks suffers from packet loss due to either temporary packet drop or fading-induced bit errors. To ensure that the quality of the decoded video is not overly affected by the channel unreliability, the video applications have to provide sufficient robustness. In this paper, a novel slice interleaving algorithm is proposed for compressed video packetization. Each packet is constructed by interleaving independently decodable slices of the coded video bit-stream in a group of frames. We group slices into packets according to the maximum minimal distance of these slices. The scattered pattern guarantees that each lost slice has, as many as possible, spatial and temporal neighbors that belong to other correctly received packets. This scheme greatly strengthens the error concealment performance compared with traditional methods. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm.