Channel-Adaptive Resource Allocation for Video Transmission over 3G Wireless Network

This paper addresses the important issues of resource allocation for video transmission over 3G wireless network. By taking the time-varying wireless channel/network condition and video codec characteristic into account, we allocate resource between source and channel coders based on the minimum-distortion or minimum-power criterion. Specifically, we first present how to estimate the time-varying wireless channel/network condition through measurements of throughput and error rate in 3G wireless network. Then, we propose a new distortion-minimized bit allocation scheme with hybrid UEP (Unequal Error Protection) and delay-constrained ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest), which dynamically adapts to the time-varying channel. Furthermore, a novel power-minimized bit allocation scheme with channeladaptive hybrid UEP and delay-constrained ARQ is proposed for mobile devices. In our proposed distortion/power-minimized bit-allocation scheme, bits are optimally distributed among source, FEC (Forward Error Correction), and ARQ according to the varying channel/network condition. Simulation and analysis are performed using Progressive Fine Granularity Scalability (PFGS) video codec. The simulation results show that our proposed schemes can significantly improve the reconstructed video quality at the same rates.