Asymmetric Multiple Description Coding using Layered Coding and Erasure Codes

With Asymmetric Multiple Description Coding we address the transmission case where there is a plethora of communication paths between sender and receiver, all with a different bandwidth and different levels of reliability (in terms of packet loss rate). For this scenario we have several possibilities for coding and transmission at our disposal, namely Round-Robin transmission, Layered Coding, Traditional (Symmetric) Multiple Description Coding, and Asymmetric MDC. Asymmetric MDC is a form of MDC, where each description is matched to a channels bandwidth and packet-loss rate. Redundancy is introduced and divided over the descriptions such that the average distortion under these lossy conditions is minimized. This paper first discusses the concept of AMDC as a generic case of MDC and introduces an implementation of AMDC based on erasure codes and layered coding. The optimal allocation of erasure codes and redundancy to each description is then found by optimization algorithms. We compare different algorithms and evaluate their complexity and performance.