Robust Distributed Multi-Point Video Conferencing Over Error-Prone Channels

In this paper, we propose a novel multi-point video conferencing system through error-prone channels, where the aggregation of multiple video streams and resource allocation are performed in a distributed manner. Video stream combiners, who are located in different geographical areas and serve as portals for conferees, aggregate incoming streams supplied by local users with other streams aggregated from nearby video stream combiners. A distributed multi-stream error protection scheme is performed in each video stream combiner to minimize the maximal expected video distortion among all aggregated streams. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme outperforms the traditional multicasting scheme by 1 dB~1.4 dB in terms of average PSNR