Hyper-trellis decoding of pixel-domain Wyner-Ziv video coding

In this paper, we present a new decoding algorithm for the Wyner-Ziv (WZ) video coding scheme based on turbo codes. In this scheme, a video frame is encoded using a turbo code, and only a subset of the parity bits are sent to the decoder. At the decoder, the temporal correlation of the video sequence is exploited by using the previous frame as noisy side information (SI) for the current frame. However, there is a mismatch between the SI, which is available as pixel values, and the binary code bits. Previous implementations of the decoder use suboptimal approaches that convert pixel values to soft information for code bits. We present a new decoding algorithm for this application based on decoding on a hyper-trellis, in which multiple states of the original code trellis are combined. We show that this approach significantly improves performance without changing the complexity of the decoder. We also introduce a new technique for the WZ decoder to exploit the spatial correlation within a frame without requiring transform-domain encoding at the encoder, thereby reducing its complexity. Simulation results for fixed-rate transmission show a 9-10-dB improvement in the peak signal-to-noise ratio when compared to a WZ video codec that does bitwise decoding and utilizes only the temporal correlation.