Content-aware packet-level interleaving method for video transmission over wireless networks

In the wireless network environment, the effect of transmission errors and losses on the video quality varies depending on the intensity of the burst and which parts of the video stream are lost. Among the existing transmission error control techniques, FEC and ARQ are good solutions for combating transmission errors, but they require redundant data. Although interleaving has no error correcting capability, it can improve subjective video quality without wasting additional bandwidth, because it allows the spreading of successive errors. In this paper, we propose a content-aware packet-level interleaving method, which uses a quantitative index to indicate the degree of content-importance of the video content, so that the effect of burst packet losses is distributed intelligently. The proposed scheme improves the overall video quality in comparison with content-blind interleaving methods.