Abstract-Robust video transmission using iteratively detected Self-Concatenated Coding (SCC), multi-dimensional Sphere Packing (SP) modulation and Layered Steered Space-Time Coding (LSSTC) is proposed for H.264 coded video transmission over correlated Rayleigh fading channels. The self-concatenated convolutional coding (SECCC) scheme is composed of a Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) code and an interleaver, which is used to randomise the extrinsic information exchanged between the self-concatenated constituent RSC codes. Additionally, a puncturer is employed for improving the achievable bandwidth efficiency. The convergence behaviour of the MIMO transceiver advocated is investigated with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts. The proposed system exhibits an E b /N0 gain of about 9 dB at the PSNR degradation point of 1 dB in comparison to the identical-rate benchmarker scheme.
I. MOTIVATION AND BACKGROUNDBandwidth is a valuable commodity and therefore the information has to be transmitted over the communication channel as bandwidth-efficiently as possible. Therefore, the state-ofthe-art multimedia coding standards primarily aim for a high compression efficiency [1]. However, the higher the coding efficiency, the more grave are the effects of transmission errors imposed on the video signal [2]. Hence, in order to protect the source coded stream from the effects of channel errors, powerful channel coding has to be applied, which introduces artificial redundancy in the source coded stream and is used for eliminating the channel-induced errors. Therefore, the error resilience is typically increased at the cost of a compromise in terms of coding efficiency.The discovery of turbo codes made communications close to the Shannon limit feasible. The turbo principle of exchanging extrinsic information has been effectively utilised for diverse combinations of codes in order to improve the attainable error resilience. In recent years, intensive research efforts have been invested in the design of concatenated coding schemes, a philosophy, which was originally proposed by Forney [3]. The turbo principle of parallel concatenated convolutional codes (PCCCs or turbo codes) employs two or more constituent codes, which exchange extrinsic information in order to operate near the Shannon limit [4,5], as detailed in [6].Additionally, the limitations of wireless transmissions imposed by time-varying multipath fading can be mitigated using multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) schemes [7]. MoreThe financial support of the following projects and organizations is gratefully acknowledged: University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar; COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Islamabad, Pakistan; the EU' CONCERTO Project; RC-UK under the auspicies of the IU-ATC.explicitly, information theoretic studies [8] have revealed that a MIMO system has a higher capacity than a single-input singleoutput (SISO) system. Substantial throughput improvements can be attained using a multi-layer MIMO structure designed for ac...