Exchange of information with low-to-zero latency is of paramount importance for many emerging applications, such as remote driving, drone control, or remote surgery operation. Nevertheless, video coding and network transmission delays are incompressible.
Linear video coding (LVC) is an emerging framework for wireless video transmission to multiple users. Relying on linear operators only, LVC provides each receiver with video quality commensurate to its channel quality. LVC suffers, however, from a significant coding latency
The Zero-Latency Linear Video Coding (ZL-LVC) project aims at proposing a low-to-zero latency end-to-end video coding and transmission system. The goal is to optimize the rate-latency-distortion trade-off for traditional, and LVC systems. The latter can benefit from integrating LVC and neural networks in the learning stage.
We need therefore to address three main scientific challenges:
- Study the encoder design choices that best fit with latency reduction;
- Propose effective schemes for latency reduction for conventional codecs and LVC;
- Propose a hybrid (conventional + LVC) video transmission system with arbitrarily low latency
We will assess the potential of ZL-LVC via a demonstrator with software-defined radio platforms.
The ZL-LVC project has been funded by the ANR within the 2020 call for projects. The partnership is lead by prof. Marco Cagnazzo (LTCI/Telecom-Paris) and made up of four partners: besides the LTCI, L2S/CentraleSupélec, IEMN/UPHF, and Ektacom.