An Efficient Hierarchical Error Recovery Method for Hybrid Broadcast/Communication Networks

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a hierarchical error recovery method for the hybrid mobile broadcast/communication networks. The mobile broadcast network (e.g., DVB-T/H, T-DMB) transmits the base forward error correction (FEC) and the multimedia content at the same time for the error recovery. However, the occurrence of errors is different due to the receiving environment of the individual mobile broadcast network, and not all the base FECs can recover errors. The server retransmits the enhanced-FEC (E-FEC) to a terminal through the individual mobile communication network and a terminal can try to recover the packet with errors which the base FEC cannot recover. If there are more retransmitted source data to a user, the overhead of a user and the communication network will increase because the individual mobile communication is a subscription-based network. Therefore, this paper proposes a hierarchical error recovery method, and the E-FEC with higher channel coding rate than base FEC is generated and transmitted. The proposed method in this paper transmits only the redundancy data for the error recovery when errors occur, and reduces the resource by 50%–80% compared with the retransmission of the source. If the source bit rate is 800 kbps, for instance, the packet error ratio is 10%, and if a user watches a broadcast content for one hour, the amount of retransmitted data is 80 kbps × 3600 = 36 MBytes, but that of the proposed method in this paper is 7.2–18 MBytes.

Keywords:

• Cross-layer
• FEC
• Hierarchical error recovery
• Hybrid networks

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the ICT R&D programme of MSIP/IITP [14-000-02-002, Development of Service and Transmission Technology for Convergent Realistic Broadcast]. The research was also supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support programme [NIPA-2014-H0301-14-1006] supervised by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion Agency).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hyung-Yoon Seo

Hyung-Yoon Seo received the B.S. degree in Computer Information Engineering from Hanseo University, Korea in 2002 and received the M.S. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from Pusan National University, Korea in 2011. He is now a Ph.D. candidate of Computer Science and Engineering in Pusan National University. His current research interests include mobile multimedia communication systems, MAC and routing protocols from mobile wireless networks, and All-IP-based network convergence.

Email: [email protected]

Byung-Jun Bae

Byung-Jun Bae received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electronics engineering from Kyungpook National University, Korea in 1995, 1997, and 2006, respectively. From 1997 to 2000, he was a researcher at LG Electronics Inc., where he worked on digital signal processing in digital television. Since 2000, he has been with the broadcasting system research group in Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in Daejeon, Korea. His current research interests include the digital signal processing, digital broadcasting protocols, digital multimedia broadcasting system, and interactive broadcasting services.

Email: [email protected]

Jong-Deok Kim

Jong-Deok Kim received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from Seoul National University, Korea in 1994, 1996, and 2003, respectively. He was with Telcoware Ltd. as a senior researcher and engineer. Since 2004, he has been with the Computer Science and Engineering Department of Pusan National University as an assistant professor. His current research interests include mobile multimedia communication systems, MAC and routing protocols for mobile wireless networks, and All-IP-based network convergence.

Email: [email protected]