Upfront intra-refresh decision for low-complexity wireless video telephony

An adaptive intra-refresh (IR) technique is proposed for low-complexity video encoding on resource-constrained wireless platforms. The IR decision is made upfront without requiring any pre-encoding, which significantly reduces the complexity and power consumption in real-time communication. To allow upfront mode decision, a novel closed-form solution is provided requiring no algorithmic iteration or exhaustive searches. The IR scheme adapts to multiple factors including the content texture information, the frame-to-frame pixel-value variation, and the estimated channel loss probability. The macroblock-based refresh can be performed using various patterns (i.e., cyclic, random etc.). Experimental results demonstrate superior performance of the adaptive scheme over fixed schemes at all channel loss rates