EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing
Volume 2007 (2007), Article ID 39586, 13 pages
doi:10.1155/2007/39586
Research Article

Transcoding-Based Error-Resilient Video Adaptation for 3G Wireless Networks

Sertac Eminsoy,1 Safak Dogan,2 and Ahmet M. Kondoz2

1NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, Cygnus House, Sunrise Parkway, Linford Wood, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire MK14 6NP, UK
2I-Lab, Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR), University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, Surrey, UK

Received 2 October 2006; Revised 19 February 2007; Accepted 13 May 2007

Academic Editor: Ming-Ting Sun

Copyright © 2007 Sertac Eminsoy et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Transcoding is an effective method to provide video adaptation for heterogeneous internetwork video access and communication environments, which require the tailoring (i.e., repurposing) of coded video properties to channel conditions, terminal capabilities, and user preferences. This paper presents a video transcoding system that is capable of applying a suite of error resilience tools on the input compressed video streams while controlling the output rates to provide robust communications over error-prone and bandwidth-limited 3G wireless networks. The transcoder is also designed to employ a new adaptive intra-refresh algorithm, which is responsive to the detected scene activity inherently embedded into the video content and the reported time-varying channel error conditions of the wireless network. Comprehensive computer simulations demonstrate significant improvements in the received video quality performances using the new transcoding architecture without an extra computational cost.