Multi–Stream Scalable Pattern–Driven Video Codec for Tactical Wireless Networks

Camera mounted robots called SUGV that can be sent in enemy territory to get a view of what's in store for the soldiers is the future of Army's high-tech combat system making the soldier's work safer. The images then need to be relayed in real-time to field commanders who in turn will describe the forward soldiers what is being sent. The weakest link in the above mentioned combat system is the ad-hoc wireless network which is low on bandwidth and highly unreliable. The poor error resilience of the modern compression techniques such as MPEG will fail them while the older compression techniques like motion-JPEG will not be able to stand up to this call because of their inefficient bandwidth usage. UtopiaCompression proposes a novel multi-path scalable video codec that will provide robust real-time video streaming capabilities suitable for deployment in teleoperated robotics, remote surveillance, etc. Better error resilience is achieved through MDC based on Layered coding and techniques like Headers Extension codes, novel packetization strategies, intra refresh etc. Furthermore, the content-driven nature of the codec makes it adaptive, reliable and robust for transmission over various network bandwidths and configurations.