Multiresolution digital video transmission over the terrestrial broadcast channel

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in the transmission of digital video over terrestrial broadcast channels due to the imminent introduction of digital advanced television (ATV) broadcasting, including HDTV. Although there are considerable system advantages of multiresolution delivery approaches, all existing digital video transmission systems are based upon a single-resolution delivery strategy. This is due in no small measure to the general intractablilty of accurate performance analysis of multiresolution delivery systems and the absence of an appropriate design methodology. This thesis addresses both of these issues. More specifically, this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of, and a detailed design methodology for, multiresolution digital video terrestrial broadcasting systems.;To provide a conceptual design framework for assessing the tradeoffs in the design of a multiresolution delivery system for HDTV, we make use of an information-theoretic based characterization of the terrestrial broadcast channel in terms of the corresponding multiresolution channel cutoff rates. For point-to-point links the channel cutoff rate is considered to be the largest practical signaling rate for which arbitrarily high reliability can be expected. For broadcast channels the multiresolution cutoff rates are expected to play an analogous role. Using these multiresolution channel cutoff rates, we analyze and compare the potential performance practically achievable by existing multiresolution transmission schemes and their variations and extensions.;In order to develop specific system designs with performance approaching these theoretical predictions, we make use of concatenated coding schemes with appropriate multiresolution signal constellations. A simplified minimal-complexity design method is developed which considerably reduces the trellis code design complexity, and a search algorithm is presented when the original and simplified minimal complexity design methods do not work. Based on these developed design methods, specific multi-dimensional trellis codes for multiresolution transmission are designed, and the performances of concatenated codes are shown to approach theoretical predictions as the complexity of codes increases. Finally, we present a theoretical study to specify constellation parameters for the best video quality of a multiresolution broadcasting system using source-channel rate-distortion functions.