Aware will develop a preliminary design for an operationally effective, scalable, error-resilient video communications system for the real-time one-way transmission of video over wireless channels having a raw (uncorrected) data rate ranging from 64 Kbps to 1.5 Mbs. The work will leverage Aware's state-of-the-art wavelet-based video compression algorithms which are currently being applied to both very low bit rate (< 32 Kbps) video telephony and low-frame rate data link applications. A key benefit of wavelet-based video compression is its scalability in spatial resolution, frame rate, quality, and computational complexity. The work plan consists of 1) trade studies and system development to specify the scalable compressed bit stream, prioritized error correction approach and layered transport protocol, 2) development of clever error localization and error concealment algorithms that are critical in the one-way real-time transmission of video over noisy channels, 3) adaptation and optimization of Aware's wavelet-based video compression algorithm for the one-way channel, 4) an architectural analysis for the cost-effective deployment of the proposed video system on a commercial-off-the shelf PC-based hardware platform. An additional optional task is to choose one architecture and begin development of a software-only decoder for a Windows 95/Pentium platform.
