EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 658794, 16 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/658794
Research Article

Unequal Protection of Video Streaming through Adaptive Modulation with a Trizone Buffer over Bluetooth Enhanced Data Rate

Rouzbeh Razavi, Martin Fleury, and Mohammed Ghanbari

 Electronic Systems Engineering Department, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
Received 1 March 2007; Revised 12 July 2007; Accepted 14 October 2007

Recommended by Peter Schelkens

Abstract

Bluetooth enhanced data rate wireless channel can support higher-quality video streams compared to previous versions of Bluetooth. Packet loss when transmitting compressed data has an effect on the delivered video quality that endures over multiple frames. To reduce the impact of radio frequency noise and interference, this paper proposes adaptive modulation based on content type at the video frame level and content importance at the macroblock level. Because the bit rate of protected data is reduced, the paper proposes buffer management to reduce the risk of buffer overflow. A trizone buffer is introduced, with a varying unequal protection policy in each zone. Application of this policy together with adaptive modulation results in up to 4 dB improvement in objective video quality compared to fixed rate scheme for an additive white Gaussian noise channel and around 10 dB for a Gilbert-Elliott channel. The paper also reports a consistent improvement in video quality over a scheme that adapts to channel conditions by varying the data rate without accounting for the video frame packet type or buffer congestion.