Optimal Audio and Voice Transmission Over Tandem Wireless Links

Featuring Ala Khalifeh
Ph.D. Candidate
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, UC Irvine

Location:  Engineering Gateway 3161
Free and open to the public

Abstract:
We present an optimization framework for transmitting high quality audio sequences over error-prone wireless links. Our framework introduces apparatus and technique to optimally protect a stored audio sequence transmitted over a wireless link while considering the packetization overhead of audio frames. Utilizing rate compatible punctured RS codes and dynamic programming, it identifies the optimal assignment of parity to audio frames according to their perceptual importance such that the Segmented SNR of the received audio sequence is maximized.  Our framework covers two cases. In the first case, a frame grouping technique is proposed to packetize audio frames and protect them against temporarily correlated bit errors introduced by a fading wireless channel. In this case, each packet is treated as a channel coding codeword. In the second case, a one-dimensional RS coder is applied vertically to a sequence of horizontally formed packets associated with an audio sequence in order to protect the sequence against both bit errors introduced by fading wireless channels and packet erasures introduced by network buffering.

About the Speaker:
Ala Khalifeh received B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Jordan in 2001 and 2004, respectively.  Since 2005, he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of California, Irvine where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate. Khalifeh was a Fulbright Scholar from 2005-2007. While at UC Irvine, he received the Alpha Phi Beta Kappa award. Khalifeh's research interests are in communications technology and networking with particular emphasis on optimal resource allocation for audio and video transmission over wired and wireless networks.