A Data Transfer Method Combining Erasure-coding with Cumulative Acknowledgment for Lossy Optical Packet Switching Networks

In lossy networks, including optical packet switching (OPS) networks and wireless networks, data recovery from frequent packet loss is essential. Erasure-coding, a type of forward error correction (FEC), is one of effective solutions, and furthermore, it could be combined with a technique that feeds back decoding progress information from the receiver to the sender for efficient data transmission. However, conventional feedback methods cannot inform the sender of the decoding progress information at the receiver when acknowledgment (ACK) packets are lost. Therefore, we propose a new data transmission method that is robust to high packet loss by feeding back accumulated information of decoded symbols at the receiver, and furthermore that smartly reduces the calculation overhead of encoding/decoding process. The proposed method can reduce the redundancy by up to 5.84% compared to conventional methods in environments where random packet loss occurs.