On the Combination of Multi-Layer Source Coding and Network Coding for Wireless Networks

This paper introduces a mutually beneficial interplay between network coding and scalable video source coding in order to propose an energy-efficient video streaming approach accommodating multiple heterogeneous receivers, for which current solutions are either inefficient or insufficient. State of the art in media streaming typically acknowledges network and source coding being complementary. Despite this, these research topics are treated separately. By cultivating advantageous behaviour and features in the network and source coding structures a correlation between coding complexity and channel quality is developed. A linear coding structure designed to gracefully encapsulate layered source coding provides both low complexity of the utilised linear coding while enabling robust erasure correction in the form of fountain coding capabilities. The proposed linear coding structure advocates efficient support of multi-resolution video streaming.