Layered coded vs. multiple description coded video over error-prone networks

Layered (LC) and multiple description coding (MDC) have been proposed as source coding techniques that are robust to channel errors for video transmission. LC and MDC have similar characteristics: they both generate multiple sub-bitstreams, and it is permissible to drop some portion of the data from the sub-bitstreams during transmission for both methods. However, they are different in the sense that the sub-bitstreams for LC have different levels of importance while all sub-bitstreams for MDC are equally important. Since these two encoding techniques have similar properties, some performance comparisons between LC and MDC have recently been reported. However, these studies are still not conclusive because several scenarios have not been carefully considered. Furthermore, they have been performed in different environments. In this paper, we further investigate the error-resilience capabilities of these two encoding techniques through extensive experimentation. Although some of our conclusions agree with those in the literature, we believe that this paper provides the most comprehensive performance comparison yet between LC and MDC. r 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.