MPEG-4 video transmission using unequal error protection for mobile satellite communications

We illustrate a MPEG-4 codec which is developed to cooperate with an earlier developed modem for MPEG-4 video transmission in mobile satellite communication channel. To improve the robustness of MPEG-4 video transmission, unequal error protection (UEP) is adopted based on multiple block coded modulation (MBCM). MPEG-4 data is partitioned and assigned with different UEP in accordance with their sensitivity to channel errors. A modified procedure to cope with the high-level data link control (HDLC) is introduced to reduce packet loss. Laboratory experiment results show that the proposed method can improve the MPEG-4 video transmission significantly.