Inter-Layer Turbo Coded Unequal Error Protection for Multi-Layer Video Transmission

In layered video streaming, the enhancement layers (ELs) must be discarded by the video decoder, when the base layer (BL) is corrupted or lost due to channel impairments. This implies that the transmit power assigned to the ELs is wasted, when the BL is corrupted. To combat this effect, in this treatise we investigate the inter-layer turbo (IL-turbo) code, where the systematic bits of the BL are implanted into the systematic bits of the ELs at the transmitter. At the receiver, when the BL cannot be successfully decoded, the information of the ELs may be utilized by the IL-turbo decoder for the sake of assisting in decoding the BL. Moreover, for providing further insights into the IL technique the benefits of the IL-turbo scheme are analyzed using extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts in the scenario of unequal error protection (UEP) coded layered video transmission. Finally, our data partitioning based experiments show that the proposed scheme outperforms the traditional turbo code based UEP scheme by about an E_b=N₀ of 1.1 dB at a peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of 36 dB or 3 dB of PSNR at an E_b=N₀ of -5.5 dB at the cost of a complexity increase of 13%.