Systematic lossy error protection of video based on H.264/AVC redundant slices

We propose the use of H.264 redundant slices for Systematic Lossy Error Protection (SLEP) of a video signal transmitted over an error-prone channel. In SLEP, the video signal is transmitted to the decoder without channel coding. Additionally, a Wyner-Ziv encoded version of the video signal is transmitted in order to provide error-resilience. In the event of channel errors, the Wyner-Ziv description is decoded as a substitute for the error-prone portions of the primary video signal. Since the Wyner-Ziv description is typically coarser than the primary video signal, SLEP is a lossy error protection technique which trades-off residual quantization distortion for improved error-resilience properties, such as graceful degradation of decoder picture quality. We describe how H.264 redundant slices can be used to generate the Wyner-Ziv description, and present simulation results to demonstrate the advantages of this method over traditional methods such as FEC.