International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / One of several methods currently under investigation to increase telemetry efficiency is channel diversity selection. A spatial technique we are exploring exploits a signal quality indicator of phase demodulation to select ‘competing’ telemetry channels sourced by antenna separated by fractional wavelengths. The Advanced Range Telemetry (ARTM) program, a Centralized Test and Evaluation Improvement Program (CTEIP) research project funded by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), recently investigated three switching criteria for a multiple antenna system. This paper will discuss an algorithm that controls channel selection, or diversity branch selection (DBS), using a combination of the techniques investigated.

<p>A channel change in digital television is usually conducted at a reference frame, which are sent at certain intervals. A higher compression ratio could however be obtained by sending reference frames at arbitrary long intervals. This would on the other hand increase the average channel change time for the end user. This thesis investigates various approaches for reducing the average channel change time while using arbitrary long intervals between reference frames, and presents an implementation and evaluation of one of these methods, called Baydec.</p><p>The approach of Baydec for solving the channel switch problem is to statistically estimate what the original image looked like, starting with an incoming P-frame and estimate an image between the original and current image. Baydec gathers statistical data from typical video sequences and calculates expected likelihood for estimation. Further on it uses the Simulated Annealing search method to maximise the likelihood function.</p><p>This method is more general than the requirements of this thesis. It is not only applicable to channel switches between video streams, but can also be used for random access in general. Baydec could also be used if an I-frame is dropped in a video stream.</p><p>However, Baydec has so far shown only theoretical result, but very small visual improvements. Baydec produces images with better PSNR than without the method in some cases, but the visual impression is not better than for the motion compensated residual images. Some examples of future work to improve Baydec is also presented.</p>

A channel change in digital television is usually conducted at a reference frame, which are sent at certain intervals. A higher compression ratio could however be obtained by sending reference frames at arbitrary long intervals. This would on the other hand increase the average channel change time for the end user. This thesis investigates various approaches for reducing the average channel change time while using arbitrary long intervals between reference frames, and presents an implementation and evaluation of one of these methods, called Baydec. The approach of Baydec for solving the channel switch problem is to statistically estimate what the original image looked like, starting with an incoming P-frame and estimate an image between the original and current image. Baydec gathers statistical data from typical video sequences and calculates expected likelihood for estimation. Further on it uses the Simulated Annealing search method to maximise the likelihood function. This method is more general than the requirements of this thesis. It is not only applicable to channel switches between video streams, but can also be used for random access in general. Baydec could also be used if an I-frame is dropped in a video stream. However, Baydec has so far shown only theoretical result, but very small visual improvements. Baydec produces images with better PSNR than without the method in some cases, but the visual impression is not better than for the motion compensated residual images. Some examples of future work to improve Baydec is also presented.