Error-protection scheme for the transmission of H.263 coded video over mobile radio channels

Mobile communication channels are subject to multipath fading, which in turn results in burst errors occurring in the transmitted bit stream. When the data is source coded video data, such errors will cause a rapid deterioration of the decoded image sequence. This paper presents a method for reducing the effects of such errors on the H.263 coded bit stream using rate compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes for unequal error protection and describes some modifications made to the source decoder for error concealment. Numerical results are obtained for RCPC codes over Gaussian and Rayleigh fading channels and they are compared with a sequence coded using a burst error correcting block code RS(15,11) and one without any form of channel coding.