An unequal error protection(UEP)method for video transmission using adaptive hierarchical quadrature amplitude modulation(A-HQAM)is proposed to reduce the impact of frequency-selective fading and the time-varying nature of wireless channels. Firstly

the video streams are divided into sub-streams with unequal priorities. Then

the HQAM modulation parameters of each sub-carrier are adaptively determined based on the channel quality of each sub-carrier and the upper limit of the bit error rate of the sub-streams with unequal priorities. Finally

UEP is implemented via modulating video streams onto sub-carriers. Simulation results show that the proposed A-HQAM method reduces the impact of frequency-selective fading and the time-varying nature of the wireless channels

and improves the quality of the reconstructed video by an average of 1 dB compared with HQAM-based methods.