Small-block interleaving for low-delay cross-packet forward error correction over burst-loss channels

By adding the redundant packets into source packet block, cross-packet forward error correction (FEC) scheme performs error correction across packets and can recover both congestion packet loss and wireless bit errors accordingly. Because cross-packet FEC typically trades the additional latency to combat burst losses in the wireless channel, this paper presents a FEC enhancement scheme using the small-block interleaving technique to enhance cross-packet FEC with the decreased delay and improved good-put. Specifically, adopting short block size is effective in reducing FEC processing delay, whereas the corresponding effect of lower burst-error correction capacity can be compensated by deliberately controlling the interleaving degree. The main features include (i) the proposed scheme that operates in the post-processing manner to be compatible with the existing FEC control schemes and (ii) to maximize the data good-put in lossy networks; an analytical FEC model is built on the interleaved Gilbert-Elliott channel to determine the optimal FEC parameters. The simulation results show that the small-block interleaved FEC scheme significantly improves the video streaming quality in lossy channels for delay-sensitive video. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.