Performance Bound Analysis for Scalable UAV Video Streaming

For unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), remote control relies heavily on real-time video streaming. Given the limitations of hardware resources and the variability of channel conditions in mobile UAV communications, scalable video coding (SVC) has become increasingly important, as it allows for bitrate adaptation while maintaining low coding complexity for UAVs. Although SVC is essential for UAVs, the mathematical relationship between video bitrate and coding complexity has not been thoroughly investigated. To address this challenge, this paper proposes using information theory to study the performance upper bounds of UAV-SVC concerning the control of computational complexity. Specifically, we introduce a method that formulates coding performance using mutual information-based closed-form expressions. Furthermore, based on the proposed method, we explore the fundamental principles that enable us to determine the performance bounds of a UAV-SVC scheme with very low computational complexity. Consequently, the findings of this paper offer a comprehensive understanding of SVC for UAV video streaming.