Evolving AL-FEC Application Towards 5G NGMN

The fifth generation of mobile technology (5G) is positioned to address the demands and business contexts of 2020 and beyond. Therefore, in 5G, there is a need to push the envelope of performance to provide, where needed, for example, much greater throughput, much lower latency, ultra-high reliability, much higher connectivity density, and higher mobility range. A crucial point in the effective provisioning of 5G Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) lies in the efficient error control and in more details in the utilization of Forward Error Correction (FEC) codes on the application layer. FEC is a method for error control of data transmission adopted in several mobile multicast standards. FEC is a feedback free error recovery method where the sender introduces redundant data in advance with the source data enabling the recipient to recover from different arbitrary packet losses. Recently, the adoption of FEC error control method has been boosted by the introduction of powerful Application Layer FEC (AL-FEC) codes. Furthermore, several works have emerged aiming to address the efficient application of ALFEC protection introducing deterministic or randomized online algorithms. In this work we propose a novel AL-FEC scheme based on online algorithms forced by the well stated AL-FEC policy online problem. We present an algorithm which exploits feedback capabilities of the mobile users regarding the outcome of a transmission, and adapts the introduced protection respectively. Moreover, we provide an extensive analysis of the proposed ALFEC algorithm accompanied by a performance evaluation against common error protection schemes.