Adaptive Forward Error Correction Scheme for Real-Time Communication in Satellite IP Networks

Abstract

In this paper, a new forward error correction (FEC) protocol is proposed for point-to-multipoint satellite links. Link-layer error control protocols in point-to-multipoint satellite links impose several problems such as unreliability and receiver-heterogeneity. To resolve the problem of heterogeneous error rates at different receivers, the proposed scheme exploits multiple multicast channels to which each receiver tunes. The more channels a receiver tunes to, the more powerful error correcting capability it achieves. Based on its own channel condition, each receiver tunes to as many channels as it needs, which prevents from receiving unwanted parities. Furthermore, each receiver saves the decoding time, processing overhead, and processing energy. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed scheme guarantees the target PER while saving energy. The proposed technique is highly adaptive to the channel variation with respect to the throughput efficiency, and provides scalable PER and throughput efficiency.