Comparison of FEC and ARQ for protection of video data over a wireless Rayleigh fading link

Video content can be provided to an end user by transmitting video data as a sequence of internet protocol (IP) packets over the network. When the network contains a wireless link, packet erasures occur because of occasional deep fades. In order to maintain a sufficient video quality at the end user, video packets must be protected against erasures by means of a suitable form of error control. In this contribution we investigate two types of application layer error control : (1) Forward Error Correction (FEC), and (2) the use of an Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) protocol. We point out that FEC and ARQ considerably reduce the probability of unrecoverable packet loss, because both error control techniques provide a diversity gain, as compared to the case where no protection against erasures is applied.

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