Practical Network Coding for scalable video in error prone networks

In this paper we apply a generalized approach for practical Network Coding (NC) called Multi-Generation Mixing (MGM) in networks communicating scalable video contents. NC has been a viable approach of communication in packet loss networks. On the other hand NC losses are expensive. NC losses reduce the ability of receiver to decode packets, and hence may severely degrade the quality of recovered video. MGM employs the layering of scalable video streams to enhance the reliability of communication. MGM provides unequal protection for the different video layers such that the overall reliability of video communication is improved. With MGM instead of having enhancement layers just dependent on lower layers, enhancement layers support the recovery of lower layers. This is done by network encoding packets of lower layers in higher layers. Through extensive simulations, we show that MGM highly improves the quality of recovered video.