3D video communications: Challenges and opportunities

This paper surveys major techniques in 3D communications area, which covers the whole pipeline of the 3D video communication framework, including 3D content creation, data representation, compression, delivery, decompression, post-processing, and 3D scene rendering stages. Both the current state-of-the-art, stereo 3D, and future trend, free-viewpoint 3D, are demonstrated in details. On the other hand, the paper highlights a few features in the emerging 4G wireless systems that are critical for 3D communications system design. At the end, the topics with potential but challenges, for example 3D over 4G networks, distributed 3D video coding, 3D multi-user communication, scalability and universal 3D access, are discussed and pointed out to audiences for further investigation. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.