Image and video transmission: A comparison study of using unequal loss protection and multiple description coding

We present a performance comparison between multiple description coding (MDC) and unequal loss protection (ULP) as tools to deliver multimedia data to mobile users. Graceful-degradation encoding schemes are able to cope with packet losses due to time-variant channels as they allow the receivers to partially reconstruct the transmitted data with only a subset of received packets. We address a rate-distortion-based multiple description coding scheme and a state-of-the-art unequal loss protection algorithm based on Reed Solomon Forward Error Correction (FEC) codes. The comparison is performed using as a case study JPEG 2000 coded images and H.264/AVC video sequences transmitted over lossy packet networks. Complexity aspects are also considered. The simulation results show that both schemes allocate the same amount of redundancy for any given encoding output rate to protect the transmitted information. The main findings are that MDC, besides being computationally less intensive, achieves a smoother performance degradation, whereas, the ULP scheme yields superior performance in terms of the expected PSNR.