Enhancing Packet-level Forward Error Correction for Streaming Video in Wireless Networks

Forward error correction (FEC) is a common error control technique in which the streaming video is protected by adding redundant data to the encoded bitstream such that the original source information can still be recovered in the event of errors or losses. Based on the information on the video content and channel status, an optimal packet-level FEC model can be built to obtain the best video delivery quality of streaming video under the transmission rate constraints. However, the wireless channel properties such as burst errors and limited bandwidth impair the FEC efficiency since the FEC schemes typically adopts large packets to achieve a high data throughput. Accordingly, this study integrates a packet size control (PSC) mechanism with the optimal packet-level FEC in order to enhance the efficiency of FEC over wireless networks. In the proposed approach, both the degree of FEC redundancy and the transport packet size are adjusted simultaneously in accordance with a minimum bandwidth consumption strategy. The experimental results show that compared to the existing optimal packet-level FEC schemes in which the packet size is fixed, the proposed FEC-PSC scheme achieves a higher FEC efficiency (i.e. a better video quality with a lower bandwidth overhead).