A real-time mobile video newsgathering and broadcast system using a wireless LAN

We introduce a video newsgathering system called mobile broadcast video. The system is designed to use a wireless LAN and low earth orbit satellite technology for increased mobility and wide area coverage. It offers broadcast-quality video by using the MPEG-2 standard for audio/video compression and multiplexing. Our prototype uses off-the-shelf hardware components with all system software developed in-house. We present our implementation, focusing particularly on real-time live video acquisition and fast delivery of the high-rate compressed data over a wireless LAN. We also introduce an effective MPEG-2 transport stream level error concealment scheme that increases subjective played-back audiovisual quality in the case of packet losses. Through experimental results, we demonstrate that an economical, high-quality, real-time solution for mobile video newsgathering and broadcasting is realizable using even wireless 802.11b LANs.