Optimization of Hierarchical Modulation for Use of Scalable Media

This paper studies the Hierarchical Modulation, a transmission strategy of the approaching scalable multimedia over frequencyselective fading channel for improving the perceptible quality. An optimization strategy for Hierarchical Modulation and convolutional encoding, which can achieve the target bit error rates with minimum global signal-to-noise ratio in a single-user scenario, is suggested. This strategy allows applications to make a free choice of relationship between Higher Priority (HP) and Lower Priority (LP) stream delivery. The similar optimization can be used in multiuser scenario. An image transport task and a transport task of an H.264/MPEG4 AVC video embedding both QVGA and VGA resolutions are simulated as the implementation example of this optimization strategy, and demonstrate savings in SNR and improvement in Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) for the particular examples shown.