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Achieving reliable acoustic wireless video transmissions in the extreme and uncertain underwater environment is a challenge due to the limited bandwidth and the error-prone nature of the channel. Aiming at optimizing the received video quality and the user's experience, an adaptive solution for underwater video transmissions is proposed that is specifically designed for Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO -based Software-Defined Acoustic Modems (SDAMs . To keep the video distortion under an acceptable threshold and to keep the Physical-Layer Throughput (PLT high, cross-layer techniques utilizing diversity-spatial multiplexing and Unequal Error Protection (UEP are presented along with the scalable video compression at the application layer. Specifically, the scalability of the utilized SDAM with high processing capabilities is exploited in the proposed structure along with the temporal, spatial, and quality scalability of the Scalable Video Coding (SVC H.264/MPEG-4 AVC compression standard. The transmitter broadcasts one video stream and realizes multicasting at different users. Experimental results at the Sonny Werblin Recreation Center, Rutgers University-NJ, are presented. Several scenarios for unknown channels at the transmitter are experimentally considered when the hydrophones are placed in different locations in the pool to achieve the required SVC-based video Quality of Service (QoS and Quality of Experience (QoE given the channel state information and the robustness of different SVC scalability. The video quality level is determined by the best communication link while the transmission scheme is decided based on the worst communication link, which guarantees that each user is able to receive the video with appropriate quality.
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ASVTuw: Adaptive Scalable Video Transmission in Underwater Acoustic Multicast Networks
Scalable Video Coding (SVC) has been widely used in video transmissions. However, inappropriate SVC structures may lead to received video quality lower than user’s requirement or resource waste, especially in underwater time-varying channels. In this work, an adaptive cross-layering solution is proposed and validated for video transmissions in underwater acoustic multicast networks, namely Adaptive Scalable Video Transmission (ASVTuw). In ASVTuw, the transmitter collects over time the information about the channel states and the users’ video quality requirements to adaptively select the SVC video structures and transmission schemes, using Machine Learning (ML). At-sea experiments were conducted to collect the required acoustic data. The collected data were then used in MATLAB simulations to validate the ASVTuw. The results show that the usage of ASVTuw avoids resource wasting from transmitting redundant SVC substreams and satisfies the multicast users’ video quality requirements effectively with higher flexibility compared with the existing noncross-layering designs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1763964
- PAR ID:
- 10388801
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- WUWNet'22: The 16th International Conference on Underwater Networks & Systems
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 8
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3567600.3568137
