Towards unifying multi-resolution and multi-description : a distortion-diversity perspective

We consider codec structures that exploit diversity in both source coding and channel coding components. We propose to study source-channel schemes using the tradeoff between end-to-end distortion level and the outage probability as our performance metric, namely distortion-diversity tradeoff. In the high SNR regime, within the distortion-diversity tradeoff framework, we are able to differentiate two source-channel schemes, one based on multi-resolution (MR) and the other based on multi-description (MD), that have been previously determined to have the same average distortion exponent. We then propose a triple-level source-channel scheme that unifies the Mr-based and the MD-based schemes. In particular, we demonstrate that the triple-level scheme dominates the MD-based and the MR-based schemes within the distortion-diversity tradeoff framework. We then extend the distortion-diversity tradeoff to the low SNR regime. We compare the distortion performance of the MR-based scheme and MD-based scheme with separate source-channel decoder that achieve constant levels of outage probability. The performance comparison between the two source-channel schemes is mixed, which naturally links the low outage probability and the high outage probability cases. In particular, the MD-based scheme with separate source-channel decoder preserves the interface between source coding component and channel coding component. The fact that MD-based scheme could outperform MR-based scheme while preserving the source-channel interface suggests that bit rates may not be a complete characterization of the source-channel interface.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Jing, Sheng, Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lizhong Zheng and Muriel Médard.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55297

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/55297