Unequal Error Protection (UEP) for Wavelet-Based Wireless 3D Mesh Transmission

The recent popularity of networked graphics applications such as distributed military simulators and online games, has increased the need to transmit large 3D meshes and textures over wireless networks. To speed up large mesh transmission over low-bandwidth wireless links, we use a wavelet-based technique that aggressively compresses large meshes and enables progressive (piece-wise) transmission. Using wavelets, a server only needs to send the full connectivity information of a small base mesh along with wavelet coefficients that refine it, saving memory and bandwidth. To mitigate packet losses caused by high wireless error rates, we propose a novel forward error correction (FEC) scheme based on unequal error protection (UEP). UEP adds more error correction bits to regions of the mesh that have more details. Our work uses UEP to make wavelet-encoded meshes more resilient to wireless errors. Experimental results shows that our proposed UEP scheme is more error-resilient than no error protection (NEP) and equal error protection (EEP) as the packet loss rate increases by achieving 50% less relative errors and maintaining the decoded mesh structure. Our scheme can be integrated into future mobile devices and shall be useful in application areas such as military simulators on mobile devices.