Error-robust video coding with channel-optimized trellis-coded quantization

This paper presents a low bit rate error-resilient channel-optimized coder for the transmission of video over the binary symmetric channel. The proposed coder uses a channel-optimized trellis-coded quantization (COTCQ) stage that is designed to optimize the video coding based on the channel characteristics. The resilience to channel errors is obtained by optimizing the coder performance only at the level of the source encoder, with no explicit use of channel coding for error protection. Additionally, due to the novel adaptive nature of the coder, the need for entropy coding and motion compensation is eliminated. Simulation results show that our coder provides outstanding quantitative and subjective coding performance for a wide variety of bit error rates, without the use of error concealment techniques.