How to Design a R-D Model for UAV Video Transmission?

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) video transmission has been extensively applied in many crucial fields. However, the problem of designing a rate-distortion (R-D) model for UAV video transmission, which is essential for theoretical analysis of video coding and optimization of video transmission quality, is under-studied. The designed R-D model is desired to be simple, accurate, and generic owing to the limited capability of the UAV. Observing the key role of transformed residuals in the R-D model, this paper elaborately discusses the modeling of the transformed residual distribution and proposes an estimation algorithm to estimate the statistical parameter of the distribution. Specifically, considering the stringent requirements for low complexity and high generalization capability, we first design a linear parameter estimator by mining and analyzing UAV video statistical characteristics. Further, we develop a bias update scheme to improve the accuracy of the estimator. Test results on multiple real video sequences taken by UAVs show that the proposed estimation algorithm is more accurate than benchmarks.