EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 518219, 12 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/518219
Research Article
Objectives for New Error Criteria for Mobile Broadcasting of Streaming Audiovisual Services
1Department of IT, University of Turku, Turku 20014, Finland
2Turku Centre for Computer Science (TUCS), Turku 20520, Finland
3Media Laboratory, Nokia Research Center, P.O. Box 1000, Tampere 33721, Finland
Received 1 October 2007; Revised 13 April 2008; Accepted 2 June 2008
Academic Editor: David Bull
Copyright © 2008 Heidi Himmanen 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
This paper demonstrates the need of and objectives for new error criteria for mobile broadcasting and the problems related to defining numerical error criteria for video services. The current error criterion used in digital video broadcasting to handheld (DVB-H), namely, multiprotocol encapsulation forward error correction (MPE-FEC) frame error ratio (MFER) 5%, was defined to enable instantaneous measurements but is not accurate enough for detailed simulations or postprocessing of measured data. To enable accurate transmission system design, parameter optimization, and performance evaluation, it is necessary to define new practical criteria for measuring the impact of transmission errors. The ambiguity of the MFER criterion is studied, and results for other conventional error criteria are derived from transmission system simulations and objective video quality measurements. The outcomes are compared to results from studies on subjective audiovisual quality. Guidelines are given on the next steps of developing new objective criteria for wireless and mobile video. It is suggested that subjective tests are performed based on the average length and average amount of errors derived from verified mobile radio channel models.