Error resilient transmission of video over ultra wideband channels

In recent years, the demand for video transmission over wireless networks has increased tremendously. Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technique, which is capable of transmitting at a data rate of up to 480 Mbps for a distance up to 10m, is one of the primary candidates for indoor video transmission in Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN). It is the main objectives of this thesis to study the performance of video transmission over UWB networks and propose enhancements to the current video transmission over UWB networks techniques.;The current UWB-WiMedia standard employs Equal Error Protection (EEP) as its protection technique. However, EEP technique in WiMedia is not efficient to protect compressed video bit-stream with different importance, as part of the video bit-stream (e.g., header, DC data, motion vector, etc) is more important compared to other part of the video bit-stream (e.g., AC data). With regards to this, Group of Picture Bit-stream Partitioning Algorithm (GOPB-PA) is proposed in the first part of this thesis. This algorithm partitions and provides higher protection to the more important video frames and vice versa. The performance of the proposed GOPB-PA in terms of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) at different channel conditions is then analyzed. In order to further enhance the proposed GOPB-PA algorithm, Adaptive Equal-Unequal Error Protection (AE-UEP) algorithm, which enables a network to switch between protection schemes (EEP, UEP and GOPB-PA UEP) is proposed. The proposed AE-UEP algorithm improves the PSNR performance at all Eb/N0 as compared to the benchmarked EEP and Unequal Error Protection (UEP) techniques.;In many video transmission systems, delivering a video file within the total allowable transmission time is a critical issue. Packet(s) dropped or lost during transmission may cause severe distortion to the reconstructed video quality. In the second part of this thesis, a sub-packet based Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) technique for UWB-WiMedia is proposed in order to improve the received video quality of video transmission over UWB-WiMedia. Comparisons between the proposed sub-packet HARQ technique and the conventional packet based HARQ technique are analyzed for their delay, throughput, bit-error-rate and overhead performance. The proposed sub-packet based HARQ technique results in better performance for all the aforementioned system parameters. In addition, it also contributes to a better reconstructed video quality performance in terms of PSNR.;In conclusion, the contributions of this thesis provide a higher quality video transmission over UWB wireless networks.