Awareness Communication Based on Functionally Layered Coding

This paper proposes a new video coding system which transmits functionally layered data for “awareness” communication. The system can display “awareness”, which is defined as a “blurred” and “semi-transparent” person region, by transmitting minimum data necessary for displaying the awareness. The minimum data contains (1) person region (foreground) and (2) lower frequency band signals of the region for displaying blurred person and (3) higher (MSB side) bit-planes of the band signals for displaying blurred and semi-transparent person. Scenery without person (background) is previously transmitted. It becomes possible to reduce redundancy in data transmission since (2) and (3) above are implemented by the “band decomposition” and the “bit-plane decomposition” of the JPEG2000 (JP2K) international standard respectively.