A novel hierarchical QAM-based unequal error protection scheme for H.264/AVC video over frequency-selective fading channels

A novel unequal error protection (UEP) scheme based on the hierarchical quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is proposed for H.264/AVC video transmission over frequency selective fading channels. In order to avoid the situation that data with higher priority in the H.264/AVC video streams to be mapped onto subcarriers in deep fading, an OFDM subcarrier classification strategy with two signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) thresholds is presented. Simulation results show that the proposed UEP scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art UEP method by up to 1.6 dB in terms of the quality of the reconstructed video.