Paolo Micanti

Error Protection and Interleaving for Wireless Transmission of JPEG 2000 Images and Video

The transmission of JPEG 2000 images or video over wireless channels has to cope with the high probability and burstyness of errors introduced by Gaussian noise, linear distortions, and fading. At the receiver side, there is distortion due to the compression performed at the sender side, and to the errors introduced in the data stream by the channel. Progressive source coding can also be successfully exploited to protect different portions of the data stream with different channel code rates, based upon the relative importance that each portion has on the reconstructed image. Unequal error protection (UEP) schemes are generally adopted, which offer a close to the optimal solution. In this paper, we present a dichotomic technique for searching the optimal UEP strategy, which lends ideas from existing algorithms, for the transmission of JPEG 2000 images and video over a wireless channel. Moreover, we also adopt a method of virtual interleaving to be used for the transmission of high bit rate streams over packet loss channels, guaranteeing a large PSNR advantage over a plain transmission scheme. These two protection strategies can also be combined to maximize the error correction capabilities.

Digital Cinema package transmission over wireless IP networks

In this paper we present a method for the quasi-reliable transfer of Digital Cinema (DC) content over packet-lossy IP networks, such as wireless networks. By employing the MXF (Material eXchange Format) encapsulation, reliable transmission of MXF keys backup, and compressed frames Forward Error Correction (FEC), we show that visual artifacts due to packet losses are virtually cancelled, and decoder crashes can be avoided. DC video content adopts JPEG 2000 for image coding; in this standard, an extension, called JPEG 2000 for Wireless (JPWL), is provided to combat codestream (i.e., compressed image) errors. For the PCM audio, a combination of FEC and error concealment provides no or minimum degradation.

Error Correction and Concealment for JPEG 2000 Video Transmitted over Wireless Networks

The transmission of compressed video sequences over wireless networks represents a particularly challenging problem, since the obtained visual quality strongly depends on the characteristics of the error-prone channel and on the tools used to compress the original sequence. In this paper, we present some methods for error concealment and error correction, which can be used when JPEG 2000 is adopted as compression tool. A judicious use of the scalability properties, error correction tools supplied by this standard, and an appropriate data interleaving algorithm can provide a good performance when compared with other error recovery methods.

A reprogrammable computing platform for JPEG 2000 and H.264 SHD video coding

In this paper, the architecture of a DSP/FPGA based hardware platform is presented, which is conceived to leverage programmable logic processing power for high definition video processing. The system is reconfigurable and scalable, since multiple boards may be parallelized to speed-up the most demanding tasks. JPEG 2000 and H.264, both at HD and Super HD (SHD) resolutions, have been simulated and their performance found on the embedded processing cores. The results show that real-time, or near real-time, encoding is viable, and the modularity of the architecture allows for parallelization and performance scalability.

Performance assessment of JPEG 2000 based MCTF and H.264 FRExt for Digital Cinema compression

In this paper we present a comparison between JPEG 2000-based Motion Compensated Temporal Filtering (MCTF) and H.264 Fidelity Range Extension (FRExt) High Profile (HP) codecs, used for the compression of video streams for Digital Cinema (DC) applications. Existing MCTF techniques have been extended and adapted to the particular characteristics of DC images, and they have been compared with state-of-the-art compression methods. The results show that H.264 generally achieves the best objective results, with MCTF very close or better at low bit rates: in this case, the existing JPEG 2000 decompression hardware may profitably exploit MCTF.

Reliable D-Cinema Multicasting over Heterogeneous Networks

This paper presents a packetization strategy for the reliable electronic distribution of Digital Cinema (DCinema, DC) content. In this paper, new experimental results and design improvements are introduced, with respect to those presented in [1]. A reliable multicast protocol was used to send high definition DC video contents to multiple receivers, allowing them to correctly acquire the entire stream. NORM (NACK Oriented Reliable Multicast) was chosen as multicast protocol, because of the guarantees offered on the reliable transmission of data. The target result is to send reliably DC contents, by exploiting a number of multicast-enabled heterogeneous networks, such as fiber, satellite, WiMAX, etc. The results show that a reasonable transfer speed may be achieved even in presence of low transmission bandwidth and moderate packet loss rate.

An optimal method for searching UEP profiles in wireless JPEG 2000 video transmission

In this paper, we present a theoretical method to find an optimal source and channel code allocation, by considering an embedded image compression standard such as JPEG 2000 and a memoryless transmission channel. Lagrangian optimization is used to find an optimal error correction profile, from a PSNR perspective, starting from intermediate rate-distortion traces. The resulting mathematical relationship is simple and can be computed in real time. Simulations on a binary symmetric channel show that the achieved performance, in terms of PSNR, is comparable with that of similar methods reported in literature, while keeping a lower complexity.

A packetization technique for D-Cinema contents multicasting over metropolitan wireless networks

This paper presents a packetization strategy for the reliable electronic distribution of digital cinema (D-cinema, DC) content. In particular, a reliable multicast protocol was used to send high definition video content to multiple receivers, allowing them to correctly receive the entire stream. The NORM protocol was chosen as multicast protocol, because of its guarantees on reliable transmission of both files and data. The target result is to send reliably DC contents, both using a single large file or a set of separate files. Applications in C++ were created to test our system

A real-time, DSP-based JPWL implementation for wireless High Definition video transmission

In this paper we present a novel implementation of the JPWL standard on a DSP device, targeted to the protection of HD video streams at 50 Mbit/s. Several investigations on computational cost have been carried out in order to find the parts that had to be optimized for DSP. The result is an implementation that uses tailored instructions for operation on Galois Field and Enhanced Direct Memory Access (EDMA) for interleaving.

Backward-compatible robust error protection of JPEG XR compressed video

The new JPEG XR image encoding standard offers a great compression rate while maintaining a good visual quality. Nonetheless, it has low error robustness, making it unusable in case of unreliable transmission over error prone channels, e.g., wireless channels. An improvement to the standard was developed, which can correct transmission errors, both bit or packet losses, and which is fully compatible with legacy decoders. Data interleaving and channel coding can offer a good protection against transmission errors; different levels of protection can be adopted, in order to trade-off between error protection capabilities and decompressed image quality.