Scalable architecture for multiple description video coding

The most recent literature indicates Multiple Description (MD) as a new coding approach to handle the problem of video transmission over unreliable networks. This technique describes the source information in equally important and independent streams named multiple descriptions, by introducing some kind of redundancy into each description. Recent works have shown the success of using motion compensation prediction also in an MD video coding scheme. Even though these MD systems have proved to be robust in an error-prone environment, they are in practice forced to use only two descriptions. This is a very strong constraint when more than two levels of reconstruction are required. For this reason this paper proposes two architectures of MD video coders; the first, that we call DC-MDVC, is based on the classical MD video codec architecture and the principle contribution is the use of a new MD algorithm based on a polyphase down-sampling technique. Since this architecture is suitable only in case of two descriptions, then a second architecture, called IF-MDVC, is given, where multi-level scalability is introduced by generating the multiple descriptions before the prediction loop. Results show that both architectures are appealing, and the second architecture seems to perform impressively well.