Performance Evaluation of an Unequal Concatenated Error Protection System for the HEVC Standard over Wireless Channels

The communication of reliable data among wireless users that employ multiclass bitstreams to achieve high coding gains has been a tremendous challenge for researchers. In practice, multimedia standards are implemented in wireless technologies to achieve unequal error protection (UEP). These standards employ data partitioning where different levels of importance are assigned to the multimedia content. In this context, in this paper, we provide a generalized UEP framework to evaluate the theoretical error performance bounds of concatenated Reed–Solomon and rate-compatible punctured convolutional (RCPC) codes employing hierarchical 8PSK modulation over both Gaussian and flat Rayleigh wireless fading channels. The contribution of this work is to promote unequal error protection of the multimedia bitstreams without sacrificing channel bandwidth and increasing the computational complexity of the communication system. All the derived theoretical performance bounds are illustrated with numerical examples, and these are simulated using MATLAB Simulink® R2017. Simulation results revealed that with the lowest constraint length of the RCPC codes, near 5-dB difference is achieved between the first- and last-priority subchannels. The proposed unequal protection scheme can be applied to deep-space data transmission systems, digital video broadcasting and wireless JPEG2000 as well as H.265 data transmission systems.