Low delay foveated visual communications over wireless channels

The great potential of `foveated imaging' lies in the entropy reduction relative to the original image while minimizing the loss of visual information. Utilizing human foveation combined with video compression, as well as communication and human-machine interface techniques, more efficient multimedia services are expected to be provided in the near future. In this paper, we introduce a prototype for foveated visual communications as one of future human interactive multimedia applications, and demonstrate the benefit of the foveation over fading statistics in the downtown area of Austin, Texas. In order to compare the performance with regular video, we use spatial/temporal resolution and source transmission delay as the evaluation criteria.