Macroblock Importance Based Method for Stereo Video Congestion Control

Transporting a stereo video stream over an unreliable channel can degrade severely the video quality. Network congestion is one of the important factors affecting the video quality. To improve the stereo video quality, a stereo video congestion control method, based on the macroblock importance, is proposed. Firstly, the importance of every macroblock is calculated according to its influence on the current frame and future frames. Then, combined with the importance information, all macroblocks of a frame are divided into three levels. Finally, the packets are transported with the help of RTP/RTCP protocol. We discard some not so important packets actively according to the importance levels when a congestion occurs. The results from NS2 simulation platform show that the stereo video quality is improved with the method proposed.