Simple Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction (FEC) Scheme for FECFRAME

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments 6865This document describes a fully-specified simple Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme for Reed-Solomon codes over the finite field (also known as the Galois Field) GF(2^^m), with 2 <= m <= 16, that can be used to protect arbitrary media streams along the lines defined by FECFRAME. The Reed-Solomon codes considered have attractive properties, since they offer optimal protection against packet erasures and the source symbols are part of the encoding symbols, which can greatly simplify decoding. However, the price to pay is a limit on the maximum source block size, on the maximum number of encoding symbols, and a computational complexity higher than that of the Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, for instance

Simple Reed-Solomon Forward Error Correction (FEC) Scheme for FECFRAME, RFC 6865

This document describes a fully-specified simple Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme for Reed-Solomon codes over the finite field (also known as the Galois Field) GF(2^^m), with 2 <= m <= 16, that can be used to protect arbitrary media streams along the lines defined by FECFRAME. The Reed-Solomon codes considered have attractive properties, since they offer optimal protection against packet erasures and the source symbols are part of the encoding symbols, which can greatly simplify decoding. However, the price to pay is a limit on the maximum source block size, on the maximum number of encoding symbols, and a computational complexity higher than that of the Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, for instance

Simple Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) Staircase Forward Error Correction (FEC) Scheme for FECFRAME, RFC 6816

This document describes a fully specified simple Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme for Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) Staircase codes that can be used to protect media streams along the lines defined by FECFRAME. These codes have many interesting properties: they are systematic codes, they perform close to ideal codes in many use-cases, and they also feature very high encoding and decoding throughputs. LDPC-Staircase codes are therefore a good solution to protect a single high bitrate source flow or to protect globally several mid-rate flows within a single FECFRAME instance. They are also a good solution whenever the processing load of a software encoder or decoder must be kept to a minimum

RS + LDPC-Staircase Codes for the Erasure Channel: Standards, Usage and Performance

Application-Level Forward Erasure Correction (AL-FEC) codes are a key element of telecommunication systems. They are used to recover from packet losses when retransmission are not feasible and to optimize the large scale distribution of contents. In this paper we introduce Reed-Solomon/LDPCStaircase codes, two complementary AL-FEC codes that have recently been recognized as superior to Raptor codes in the context of the 3GPP-eMBMS call for technology [1]. After a brief introduction to the codes, we explain how to design high performance codecs which is a key aspect when targeting embedded systems with limited CPU/battery capacity. Finally we present the performances of these codes in terms of erasure correction capabilities and encoding/decoding speed, taking advantage of the 3GPP-eMBMS results where they have been ranked first

Simple Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) Staircase Forward Error Correction (FEC) Scheme for FECFRAME

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments 6816This document describes a fully specified simple Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme for Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) Staircase codes that can be used to protect media streams along the lines defined by FECFRAME. These codes have many interesting properties: they are systematic codes, they perform close to ideal codes in many use-cases, and they also feature very high encoding and decoding throughputs. LDPC-Staircase codes are therefore a good solution to protect a single high bitrate source flow or to protect globally several mid-rate flows within a single FECFRAME instance. They are also a good solution whenever the processing load of a software encoder or decoder must be kept to a minimum

A survey of digital television broadcast transmission techniques

This paper is a survey of the transmission techniques used in digital television (TV) standards worldwide. With the increase in the demand for High-Definition (HD) TV, video-on-demand and mobile TV services, there was a real need for more bandwidth-efficient, flawless and crisp video quality, which motivated the migration from analogue to digital broadcasting. In this paper we present a brief history of the development of TV and then we survey the transmission technology used in different digital terrestrial, satellite, cable and mobile TV standards in different parts of the world. First, we present the Digital Video Broadcasting standards developed in Europe for terrestrial (DVB-T/T2), for satellite (DVB-S/S2), for cable (DVB-C) and for hand-held transmission (DVB-H). We then describe the Advanced Television System Committee standards developed in the USA both for terrestrial (ATSC) and for hand-held transmission (ATSC-M/H). We continue by describing the Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting standards developed in Japan for Terrestrial (ISDB-T) and Satellite (ISDB-S) transmission and then present the International System for Digital Television (ISDTV), which was developed in Brazil by adopteding the ISDB-T physical layer architecture. Following the ISDTV, we describe the Digital Terrestrial television Multimedia Broadcast (DTMB) standard developed in China. Finally, as a design example, we highlight the physical layer implementation of the DVB-T2 standar

Performance Analysis of a High-Performance Real-Time Application with Several AL-FEC Schemes

International audienceReal-time streaming applications typically require minimizing packet loss and transmission delay so as to keep the best possible playback quality. From this point of view, IP datagram losses (e.g. caused by a congested router, or caused by a short term fading problem with wireless transmissions) have major negative impacts. Although Application Layer Forward Error Correction (AL-FEC) is a useful technique for protecting against packet loss, the playback quality is largely sensitive to the AL-FEC code/codec features and the way they are used. In this work, we consider three FEC schemes for the erasure channel: 2D parity check codes, Reed-Solomon over GF(2^8) codes, and LDPC-Staircase codes, all of them being currently standardized within IETF. We have integrated these FEC schemes in the FECFRAME framework, a framework that is also being standardized at IETF, and whose goal is to integrate AL-FEC schemes in real-time protocol stacks in a simple and flexible way. Then we modified the Digital Video Transport System (DVTS) high-performance real-time video streaming application so that it can benefit from FECFRAME in order to recover from transmission impairments. We then carried out several performance evaluations in order to identify, for a given loss rate, the optimal configuration in which DVTS performs the best

Block or Convolutional AL-FEC Codes? A Performance Comparison for Robust Low-Latency Communications

Application-Level Forward Erasure Correction (AL-FEC) codes are a key element of telecommunication systems. They are used to recover from packet losses during large scale content distribution, for instance within the FLUTE/ALC (file transfers) and FECFRAME (continuous real-time media transfers) protocols of the 3GPP Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS) standard. However currently standardized and deployed AL-FEC codes for these protocols (e.g., Raptor(Q) or LDPC-Staircase) are all block codes which means that the data flow must be segmented into blocks of predefined size. Surprisingly AL-FEC codes based on a sliding encoding window have not yet been considered in spite of their major advantages. This work analyzes both types of codes in the context of real-time (e.g., multimedia) flows. More precisely, it details how to initialize block and convolutional AL-FEC codes to comply with real-time constraints and introduces the " decoding beyond maximum latency " optimization to convolutional codes. Then it compares the added FEC-related latency of both solutions and the decoding throughput of the two codecs. This work highlights the major benefits of convolutional codes for the large scale distribution of real-time flows and supports the idea of extending FECFRAME specifications (RFC 6363) to support convolutional FEC codes

Forward Error Correction for Fast Streaming with Open-Source Components

The mechanisms that provide streaming functionality are complex and far from perfect. Reliability in transmission depends upon the underlying protocols chosen for implementation. There are two main networking protocols for data transmission: TCP and UDP. TCP guarantees the arrival of data at the receiver, whereas UDP does not. Forward Error Correction is based on a technology called “erasure coding”, and can be used to mitigate data loss experienced when using UDP. This paper describes in detail the development of a video streaming library making use of the UDP transport protocol in order to test and further explore network based Forward Error Correction erasure codes