Concatenated Block Codes for Unequal Error Protection of Embedded Bit Streams

• Published in: IEEE transactions on image processing Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 1111 - 1122
• Main Authors: Arslan, S. S., Cosman, P. C., Milstein, L. B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.03.2012; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithm design and analysis; Applied sciences; Block codes; Blocking; Budgeting; Channels; Coders; Codes; Coding; Coding, codes; Concatenated block coding; Decoding; Delta modulation; Detection, estimation, filtering, equalization, prediction; embedded bit streams; Encoders; Encoding; Exact sciences and technology; fine-grain scalability; H.264; Image processing; Information, signal and communications theory; joint source-channel coding (JSCC); JPEG2000; Optimization; packetization; Parity check codes; Payloads; rate allocation; set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT); Signal and communications theory; Signal processing; Signal, noise; Streams; Telecommunications and information theory; unequal error protection (UEP); Video coding; Performance evaluation; fine-grain scalability; Block code; State of the art; Scalability; Partition method; Bit error rate; H.264; Resource allocation; Concatenated codes; Joint source channel coding; Video signal processing; set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT); Image coding; Codec; unequal error protection (UEP); Granular material; joint source-channel coding (JSCC); JPEG2000; Packet switching; packetization; Coding circuit; Protective device; Image compression; rate allocation; Channel coding; Hierarchized structure; Concatenated block coding; Wavelet transformation; embedded bit streams; Signal processing; Interleaved codes; Error correction; Multiple channel
• ISSN: 1057-7149; 1941-0042; 1941-0042
• DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2011.2167342

A state-of-the-art progressive source encoder is combined with a concatenated block coding mechanism to produce a robust source transmission system for embedded bit streams. The proposed scheme efficiently trades off the available total bit budget between information bits and parity bits through efficient information block size adjustment, concatenated block coding, and random block interleavers. The objective is to create embedded codewords such that, for a particular information block, the necessary protection is obtained via multiple channel encodings, contrary to the conventional methods that use a single code rate per information block. This way, a more flexible protection scheme is obtained. The information block size and concatenated coding rates are judiciously chosen to maximize system performance, subject to a total bit budget. The set of codes is usually created by puncturing a low-rate mother code so that a single encoder-decoder pair is used. The proposed scheme is shown to effectively enlarge this code set by providing more protection levels than is possible using the code rate set directly. At the expense of complexity, average system performance is shown to be significantly better than that of several known comparison systems, particularly at higher channel bit error rates.