Video transmission to and from mobile users is an increasingly relevant service for current and next generation wireless networks. However, ensuring the best video quality at the final receiver is difficult when the video has to be sent to many mobile users, each experiencing different time-varying channel characteristics. Also, in several delay-constrained video applications (e.g., videoconferencing, immersive video, teleoperation, etc.), low latency video systems become challenging.

Linear Video Coding and Transmission (LVCT) architectures, pioneered by the SoftCast scheme, have demonstrated over the last decade a high potential to address the above issues. Such architectures process pixels by successive linear operations (decorrelation, power allocation, pseudo-analog modulation) and directly transmit information without quantization or coding. This allows receivers to get a decoded video quality commensurate with their channel quality, without requiring any feedback information, while avoiding complex adaptation mechanisms.

This tutorial will give a complete overview of LVCT with focus on SoftCast, from signal processing theory and visual quality performances to recent hardware implementations from the literature.

Keywords: Linear Video Coding and Transmission (LVCT) schemes, SoftCast, Wireless Video Delivery, Software-Defined Radio (SDR), Visual Quality