Robust low bit-rate 3-D subband codec

All the present standards for low bit-rate video coding are based on an interframe motion-compensated hybrid scheme. These systems offer a bad error resilence, making them inappropriate for the transmission of video sequences over noisy channels. The introduction of error correction (FEC) codes may help the decoding process, but the consequent increase on the transmission rate has to be compensated by throttling the source coder rate to even lower rates. Even worse, in the case of fading channels or highly noisy channels, the FEC may not be sufficient to correct the transmission errors. To cope with this situation we propose a robust coding scheme for low bit-rate video communications. This system is based on a 3-D subband decomposition with a novel approach to code the upper frequency bands.