Error resilience and concealment in MVC video over wireless networks.

Abstract

Multi-view video is capable of presenting a full and accurate depth perception of a scene. The concept of multi-view video is becoming more useful especially in 3D display systems by enhancing the viewing of high resolution stereoscopic images from arbitrary viewpoints without the use of any special glasses. Like monoscopic video, the multi-view video is faced with different challenges such as: reliable compression, storage and bandwidth due to the increased number of views as well as the high sensitivity to transmission errors. All these may lead to a detrimental effect on the reconstructed views. The work in this thesis investigates the problems and challenges of transmission losses in a multi-view video bitstream over error prone wireless networks. Based on the network simulation results, the proposed technique is capable of addressing the problem of transmission losses. In practical wireless networks, transmission errors are inevitable and pose a serious challenge to the coded video data. The aim of this research effort is to examine the effect of these errors in a multi-view video bitstream when transmitted over a lossy channel. Moreover, this research work aims to develop a novel scheme that can make the multi-view coded videos more robust to transmission errors by minimizing the error effects and improving the perceptual quality. Multi-layer data partitioning as an error resilient technique is developed in JMVC 8.5 reference software in order to make the multi-view video bitstream more robust during transmission. In addition to that, we propose a simple decoding scheme that can support the decoding of the multi-layer data partitioning bitstream over channels with high error rate. The proposed technique is benchmarked with the already existing H.264/AVC data partitioning technique. The work in this thesis also employs the use of group of pictures as a coding parameter to investigate and reduce the effects of transmission errors in multi-view video transmitted over a very high error rate channel. The experiments are carried out with different error loss rates in order to evaluate the performance of these techniques in terms of perceptual quality when transmitted over a simulated erroneous channel. Errors are introduced using the Sirannon network simulator. The error performance of each technique is evaluated and analysed both objectively and subjectively after reconstruction. The results of the research investigation and simulation are presented and analysed in chapter six of the thesis.