Improved Redundant Picture Coding Using Polyphase Downsampling for H.264

This paper presents an improved redundant picture coding method that efficiently enhances the error resiliency of H.264. The proposed method applies polyphase downsampling to residual blocks obtained from inter prediction and selectively encodes the rearranged residual blocks in the redundant picture coding process. Moreover, a spatial-temporal sample construction method is developed for the redundant coded picture, which further improves the reconstructed picture quality in error prone environments. Simulations based on JM11.0 were run to verify the proposed method on different test sequences in various error prone environments with average packet loss rates of 3%, 5%, 10%, and 20%. Results of the simulations show that the presented method significantly improves the robustness of H.264 to packet loss by 1.6 dB PSNR on average over the conventional redundant picture coding method.