Low Complexity Differentiating Adaptive Erasure Codes for Multimedia Wireless Broadcast

TL;DR

This paper proposes a low-complexity, adaptive erasure coding scheme for multimedia wireless broadcast that improves scalability, reduces latency, and differentiates subscriber classes, using simple rateless codes and efficient decoding mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a practical, linear-complexity decoding scheme with tight latency bounds, outperforming complex pre-coded schemes in multimedia broadcast scenarios.

Findings

Linear complexity decoding with tight latency bounds

Simple Ideal Soliton rateless codes outperform pre-coded schemes

Scheme enables subscriber differentiation regardless of signal quality

Abstract

Based on the erasure channel FEC model as defined in multimedia wireless broadcast standards, we illustrate how doping mechanisms included in the design of erasure coding and decoding may improve the scalability of the packet throughput, decrease overall latency and potentially differentiate among classes of multimedia subscribers regardless of their signal quality. We describe decoding mechanisms that allow for linear complexity and give complexity bounds when feedback is available. We show that elaborate coding schemes which include pre-coding stages are inferior to simple Ideal Soliton based rateless codes, combined with the proposed two-phase decoder. The simplicity of this scheme and the availability of tight bounds on latency given pre-allocated radio resources makes it a practical and efficient design solution.