System and method of correcting video data errors

• US 7,577,898 B2
• Filed: 04/10/2006
• Issued: 08/18/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SBC Knowledge Ventures LP
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hartman, David B., Costa, Pierre, Ansari, Ahmad, Medford, Brad Allen
• Primary Examiner(s): Abraham; Esaw T
• Application Number:
  US11/400,908
• Publication Number:
  US 20070250754A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,226 Days
• Field of Search: 714/752, 714/784, 714/786, 714/776
• US Class Current: 714/776
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 13/373 with erasure correction and erasure determination, e.g. for packet loss recovery or setting of erasures for the decoding of Reed-Solomon codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/89 involving methods or arrangements for detection of transmission errors at the decoder

Abstract

The present disclosure is directed to a system and method of correcting video data errors. In a particular embodiment, the method includes receiving a plurality of Internet Protocol (IP) video data packets at a generator of a video acquisition system. The method also includes calculating a first error correction code corresponding to a first error profile and generating a first forward error correction (FEC) packet to produce the first error correction code. The method also includes calculating a second error correction code corresponding to a second error profile and generating a second FEC packet to produce the second error correction code. Further, the method includes transmitting a stream of data packets including the plurality of IP video data packets, the first FEC packet and the second FEC packet, to a re-generator of an Internet Protocol video transport system, where an arbitrator of the re-generator identifies an error in the plurality of IP video data packets and selects one of a plurality of inverse FEC functions to correct the error.

Claims

1. A method of correcting video data errors, the method comprising:

receiving a plurality of Internet Protocol (IP) video data packets at a generator of a video acquisition system;

calculating a first error correction code and generating a first forward error correction (FEC) packet to produce the first error correction code;

placing the IP video data packets into a first queue that has an associated first error profile that corresponds to the first error correction code;

calculating a second error correction code and generating a second FEC packet to produce the second error correction code;

placing the IP video data packets into a second queue that has an associated second error profile that is different from the first error profile, wherein the second error profile corresponds to the second error correction code; and

transmitting a stream of data packets including the plurality of IP video data packets, the first FEC packet and the second FEC packet, to a re-generator of an Internet Protocol video transport system, wherein an arbitrator of the re-generator identifies an error in the plurality of IP video data packets and selects one of a plurality of inverse FEC functions to correct the error.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first error profile includes a first packet loss characteristic and the second error profile includes a second packet loss characteristic.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

buffering the plurality of IP video data packets in the first queue until the first FEC packet is generated; and

buffering the plurality of IP video data packets in the second queue until the second FEC packet is generated.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

calculating a next error correction code corresponding to a next error profile and generating a next FEC packet to produce the next error correction code; and

wherein the next FEC packet is included in the stream of data packets.

5. A system to correct video data errors, the system comprising:

a generator having a processor and a memory device;

wherein the memory device includes a data packet module executable by the processor to receive a plurality of Internet Protocol (IP) video data packets;

wherein the memory device includes a queue module executable by the processor to maintain a plurality of queues, wherein each queue is associated with a different error profile of a plurality of error profiles;

wherein the memory device includes a forward error correction (FEC) module executable by the processor to calculate a plurality of error correction codes for the plurality of IP video data packets, each error correction code corresponding to one of the plurality of error profiles;

wherein the FEC module is executable by the processor to generate a plurality of FEC packets, each FEC packet associated with one of the plurality of error correction codes;

wherein the memory device includes a transmission module executable by the processor to transmit a stream of data packets including the plurality of IP video data packets and the plurality of FEC packets to a re-generator of an Internet Protocol video transport system; and

wherein the re-generator identifies an error in the plurality of IP video data packets and selects one of a plurality of inverse FEC functions to correct the error.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein at least one of a first error correction code and a second error correction code of the plurality of error correction codes includes a Pro-Moving Picture Experts Group Code of Practice 3-based (Pro-MPEG COP3-based) code, a Reed-Solomon code, a Luby Transform code, a Raptor code, a Golay code, a Hamming code, a Bose/Ray-Chaudhuri/Hocquenghem (BCH) code, a turbo-based code, a convolutional code, an interleaver, or any combination thereof.

7. The system of claim 5, wherein the generator receives the plurality of IP video data packets from a satellite video acquisition system.

8. The system of claim 5, further comprising a transmitter interface to transmit the stream of data packets to the re-generator.

9. A system to correct video data errors, the system comprising:

a re-generator having a processor and a memory device;

wherein the memory device includes a data packet receipt module executable by the processor to receive a stream of data packets including a plurality of initial Internet Protocol (IP) video data packets and a plurality of forward error correction (FEC) packets, wherein each FEC packet is generated by a different generator queue of a plurality of generator queues, wherein each generator queue has a different associated error profile of a plurality of error profiles;

wherein the memory device includes an error module executable by the processor to determine that the plurality of initial IP video data packets includes an error having one of the plurality of error profiles; and

wherein the memory device includes an arbitrator module executable by the processor to select one of a plurality of inverse FEC functions to correct the error.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein the arbitrator module is executable by the processor to identify one of the plurality of FEC packets, wherein the identified FEC packet is associated with an error correction code corresponding to an error profile of one of the plurality of error profiles.

11. The system of claim 9, further comprising an inverse FEC module executable by the processor to calculate each of the plurality of inverse FEC functions, wherein each of the plurality of inverse FEC functions corresponds to one of the plurality of FEC packets.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the inverse FEC module is executable by the processor to produce a plurality of inverse FEC blocks, each inverse FEC block associated with one of the plurality of inverse FEC functions.

13. The system of claim 9, further comprising a receiver queue module executable by the processor to buffer each of the plurality of FEC packets in one of a plurality of receiver queues.

14. The system of claim 9, further comprising a downstream transmission module executable by the processor to send a corrected stream of IP video data packets to a video server of an Internet Protocol Television (IPTY) system, wherein the corrected stream of IP video data packets includes at least one reconstructed IP video data packet.

15. A computer program embedded in a computer-readable storage medium, the computer program comprising:

instructions to receive a plurality of Internet Protocol (IP) video data packets;

instructions to calculate a plurality of error correction codes for the plurality of IP video data packets, each error correction code corresponding to one of a plurality of error profiles, wherein each error profile corresponds to a different queue of a plurality of queues;

instructions to generate a plurality of FEC packets, each FEC packet associated with one of the plurality of error correction codes; and

instructions to transmit a stream of data packets including the plurality of IP video data packets and the plurality of FEC packets to a re-generator of an Internet Protocol video transport system, wherein an arbitrator of the re-generator identifies an error in the plurality of IP video data packets and selects one of a plurality of inverse FEC functions to correct the error.

16. The computer program of claim 15, wherein the plurality of FEC packets does not exceed a pre-defined proportion of the plurality of IP video data packets.