D-cast

Abstract

Mobile video broadcasting is a popular application of wireless network. However, the traditional layer based approaches have limited supports to the accommodation of users with diverse channel conditions. The newly emerged Softcast approach provides smooth multicast performance but is not very efficient in inter frame compression. In this work, we propose a new video multicast approach: D-cast. Instead of using conventional close loop prediction (CLP), D-cast is based on distributed source coding (DSC) theory. This helps D-cast to avoid error propagation but still achieve high compression efficiency in inter frame coding. D-cast outperforms softcast 3--5dB in video PSNR while maintaining the similar graceful degradation feature as softcast. In addition, D-cast is efficient in not only narrow band channel but also wide band channel.