UC Irvine

We consider progressive transmission over a hybrid channel introducing bit errors and packet erasures. The existing solutions are analyzed and extended to the case of a channel that exhibits memory on both bit errors and packet erasures. We then propose a simple, low-complexity coding scheme that transforms the hybrid channel into a channel with a single impairment for which various optimization techniques exist. Both rate-based and distortion-based optimization problems are investigated. It is shown that our proposed solution has lower channel coding and rate-distortion optimization complexities compared to the known solutions. Simulation results for channels with and without memory show the effectiveness of our proposed solution over a wide range of operating conditions. Numerical results also indicate that the rate-based solution of our proposed algorithm is very close to the corresponding distortion-based solution.