Video coding with multiple descriptors and spatial scalability for device diversity in wireless multi-hop networks

Providing video services to heterogeneous clients in wireless ad hoc networks is particularly challenging as (i) the heterogeneous client processing and display capabilities typically prevent clients from processing and displaying the same encoded video information, and (ii) wireless connections typically suffer from bandwidth variability and transmission errors. We jointly address these two challenges by introducing a novel video coding strategy which combines multiple description coding, in particular temporal descriptors, with layered spatial coding. Our spatial scalable descriptor coding strategy enables heterogeneous clients in wireless multi-hop networks with path diversity to receive preencoded video streams over independent paths and to process only that amount of encoded video information that suits their processing and display capabilities. We evaluate our coding strategy through simulation experiments with a highly dynamic video sequence. We find that our coding strategy with two descriptors improves the quality of the received video by approximately 4 dB and cuts the quality variability approximately in half compared to layered coding.