We consider the transmission of a Gaussian source through a block fading channel. Assuming each block is decoded independently, the received distortion depends on the tradeoff between quantization accuracy and probability of outage. Namely, higher quantization accuracy requires a higher channel code rate, which increases the probability of outage. We first treat an outage as an erasure, and evaluate the received mean distortion with erasure coding across blocks as a function of the code length. We then evaluate the performance of scalable, or multi-resolution coding in which coded layers are superimposed within a coherence block, and the layers are sequentially decoded. Both the rate and power allocated to each layer are optimized. In addition to analyzing the performance with a finite number of layers, we evaluate the mean distortion at high signal-to-noise ratios as the number of layers becomes infinite. As the block length of the erasure code increases to infinity, the received distortion converges to a deterministic limit, which is less than the mean distortion with an infinite-layer scalable coding scheme. However, for the same standard deviation in received distortion, infinite layer scalable coding performs slightly better than erasure coding, and with much less decoding delay.

We consider the transmission of a Gaussian source through a block fading channel. Assuming each block is decoded independently, the received distortion depends on the tradeoff between quantization accuracy and probability of outage. Namely, higher quantization accuracy requires a higher channel code rate, which increases the probability of outage. Here we evaluate the received mean distortion with erasure coding across blocks as a function of the code length. We also evaluate the performance of scalable, or multi-resolution coding in which coded layers are superimposed, and the layers are sequentially decoded. In addition to analyzing a finite number of layers, we evaluate the mean distortion at high signal-to-noise ratios as the number of layers becomes infinite. As the block length of the erasure code increases to infinity, the received distortion converges to a deterministic limit, which is less than the mean distortion with an infinite-layer scalable coding scheme. However, for the same standard deviation in received distortion, infinite layer scalable coding performs slightly better than erasure coding.

In this paper, a novel framework for multiple description coding of video is presented. The proposed scheme is based on a wavelet source coder and an efficient methodology for the generation of multiple descriptions. An algorithm is also presented for the optimal, in the sense of maximizing reconstruction quality, allocation of redundancy among the descriptions. Experimental results for the transmission of video using two descriptions demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

A novel framework for multiple description coding of video is presented. The proposed scheme is based on an efficient methodology for the generation of multiple descriptions which eliminates drift at the decoder. An arbitrary number of descriptions can be obtained from the same original video sequence. Experimental results for the transmission of video using two descriptions demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methodology.