Improving MAC-layer error recovery for 3G cellular broadcasts

Abstract

The error-prone nature of the radio channel is the major challenge in servicing video streams over cdma2000 1xEVDO broadcast networks. Forward error correction is commonly used when broadcasting a video stream over a lossy network: in BCMCS, the MAC protocol uses Reed-Solomon coding. We analyze the performance of Reed-Solomon error recovery with various parameter settings, and prove the correctness of our analysis through experiment. We also propose a Hybrid-ARQ scheme to improve error recovery capacity in the BCMCS environment. Simulation results show a significant reduction in packet loss while quantitatively validating our approach.