This article is part of the series Advanced Video Technologies and Applications for H.264/AVC and Beyond.

Open Access Research Article

Robust Transmission of H.264/AVC Streams Using Adaptive Group Slicing and Unequal Error Protection

Nikolaos Thomos1,2*, Savvas Argyropoulos1,2, Nikolaos V Boulgouris3 and Michael G Strintzis1,2

Author Affiliations

1 Information Processing Laboratory, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54124, Greece

2 Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH), Informatics and Telematics Institute, Thessaloniki 57001, Greece

3 Department of Electronic Engineering, Division of Engineering, King's College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK

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EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing 2006, 2006:051502 doi:10.1155/ASP/2006/51502


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://asp.eurasipjournals.com/content/2006/1/051502


Received:29 July 2005
Revisions received:12 December 2005
Accepted:18 February 2006
Published:8 May 2006

© 2006 Thomos et al.

We present a novel scheme for the transmission of H.264/AVC video streams over lossy packet networks. The proposed scheme exploits the error-resilient features of H.264/AVC codec and employs Reed-Solomon codes to protect effectively the streams. A novel technique for adaptive classification of macroblocks into three slice groups is also proposed. The optimal classification of macroblocks and the optimal channel rate allocation are achieved by iterating two interdependent steps. Dynamic programming techniques are used for the channel rate allocation process in order to reduce complexity. Simulations clearly demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over other recent algorithms for transmission of H.264/AVC streams.

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