Unequal error protection of images over Rayleigh fading channels

This paper introduces a method of transmitting error resilient SPIHT coded images over highly error prone Rayleigh fading channels. Firstly, the source significance of the SPIHT coded output is obtained. Based upon the significance of the bits, the channel coding is varied accordingly. Channel coding consists of a mixture of rate compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes and interleaving to combat the burst errors produced by the fading channel. An additional error concealment technique is also introduced into the SPIHT decoder to improve its results in cases where errors cause the corruption of the average luminance level during decoding. Comparison with using RS block codes at a total transmission rate of 1.0 bpp (bits/pixel) is carried out over fading channels with very high error rates to show the superiority of this method over methods using fixed rate burst error codes