Optimal Packet Loss Protection of Progressively Compressed 3-D Meshes

We consider a state-of-the-art system that uses layered source coding and forward error correction with Reed-Solomon codes to efficiently transmit 3-D meshes over lossy packet networks. Given a transmission bit budget, the performance of this system can be optimized by determining how many layers should be sent, how each layer should be packetized, and how many parity bits should be allocated to each layer such that the expected distortion at the receiver is minimum. The previous solution for this optimization problem uses exhaustive search, which is not feasible when the transmission bit budget is large. We propose instead an exact algorithm that solves this optimization problem in linear time and space. We illustrate the advantages of our approach by providing experimental results for the compressed progressive meshes (CPM) mesh compression technique.