H. 264 encoder parameter optimization for encoded wireless multimedia transmissions

Abstract

Wireless multimedia sensor network has been renewed to the distributed model by incorporating the single board computer (i.e., camera nodes and mobile beacons). The redesigned camera nodes, such as unmanned aerial vehicle and mobile beacon nodes are limited in terms of memory, computation power, bandwidth, and node power while the real-time processing requires the multimedia contents transmission over the wireless interface in the presence of all these constraints. To tackle this problem, advanced video compression schemes have been adopted by which bit rate overhead over the network is greatly improved. H.264/moving picture experts group (MPEG)-4 is a state-of-the-art video compression standard developed jointly by International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector video coding experts group and ISO/Joint Technical Committee of International Electrotechnical Commission MPEG. The H.264 provides a number of tunable parameters (e.g., quantization parameter (QP) and number of reference frames (NoRF)) for tailoring the encoding process as per requirements. In this paper, we propose a framework consisting of a joint parameter cost function to find the best trade-off between QP and NoRF with the policy of controlling the bit-rate (BR) while maintaining reasonably good video quality without compromising on processing delay (PD) and nodal power consumption (NPC). The framework has been proposed by transforming the multi-objective problem into a convex optimization problem. It is shown that an optimal trade-off between these conflicting objectives can be achieved by choosing appropriate values for QP and NoRF. Results for optimal values of QP and NoRF with corresponding trade-off between BR, quality of multimedia contents, low PD and low NPC are presented. Keywords: Streaming media, Encoding, Video recording, Quality assessment, Multimedia communication, Wireless communication, Quantization (signal)