An Efficient Data Classification Scheme with the H.264 Flexible Marcoblock Ordering

The flexible macroblock ordering (FMO) feature of the state-of-the-art advanced video coding standard, H.264, provides an efficient error resilience tool for video transmission over unreliable channels. In this paper, we exploit FMO to classify the data and introduce an opportunity for unequal error protection (UEP), where more important macroblocks are better protected than the others. However, the default mapping structures in the standard may not be optimized for this scenario. This paper presents an efficient FMO mapping technique that can be well suited to UEP techniques. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme is superior to the default standard mapping schemes, and has the advantage of controlling the high-to-low priority layer rate ratio according to application's requirements