AL-FEC Repair Packet Flow for Reliable Multi-Stream Transmission
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Solution Overview
Problem
In communication systems, data loss during packet transmission leads to poor audio and video quality, file omissions, and user inconvenience due to the lack of effective error correction methods for packet-based communication schemes, especially with high-capacity content transmissions.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus for configuring packets using application layer forward error correction (AL-FEC) that generates and transmits repair packets with error correction codes, along with data packets, to enhance network reliability, without modifying the original data packets, and includes signaling methods that add source symbol identification to distinguish between data and repair packets.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If data is transmitted without error correction in congested networks, then transmission speed is maintained, but data loss occurs leading to poor audio and video quality
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments data into source packets with unique identifiers and organizes them into source packet blocks. This segmentation enables selective error correction application to specific packet groups while maintaining overall transmission efficiency. The receiver can process and repair individual blocks independently, reducing overall processing complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies forward error correction encoding in advance to generate repair packets before transmission. These repair packets are prepared with error correction codes that can restore lost source packets without requiring complex real-time processing at the receiver, thus improving reliability while keeping receiver complexity low.
2Reliability
If repair packets are generated and transmitted using AL-FEC, then network reliability is improved, but transmission bandwidth is consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies error correction selectively to specific source packet blocks rather than all transmitted data. By identifying which packets require protection and generating repair packets only for those blocks, the system improves reliability where needed while minimizing bandwidth consumption on already-protected or non-critical data streams.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent allows dynamic adjustment of error correction parameters including the ratio of source packets to repair packets, the size of source packet blocks, and the selection of which data streams receive protection. These parameter changes enable optimization of the balance between reliability improvement and bandwidth consumption based on network conditions and content priority.
3Reliability
If source packets are modified after FEC encoding, then error correction can be applied, but packet structure integrity is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the essential data from source packets and organizes them into source symbol blocks for FEC encoding, while keeping the original packet structures intact. The repair packets contain corrected data in a separate structure that can be used to restore lost packets without modifying the original transmitted packets, thus maintaining packet structure integrity while enabling error correction.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for transmitting a packet for N data streams in a communication system is provided. The method includes dividing each of the data streams into data payloads and adding a header for discriminating between the N data streams to each of the data payloads, determining, from the source packet flow, an FEC source formed by source packets generated from an (N−M) number of data streams, distinguishing at least one source packet block, generating a source symbol block from the at least one distinguished source packet block, generating a repair symbol block formed by at least one repair symbol, determining a repair flow ID for identifying a repair flow formed by the repair symbols generated from the FEC source packet flow, generating an FEC repair packet by adding a header to each of the repair symbols of the repair flow, and transmitting the source packet and the FEC repair packet.