Terminal-Aware Adaptive Coding Multicasting
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Communication networks face challenges in providing high availability and quality of services to multiple terminals with varying link conditions and capabilities, as existing adaptive coding and modulation techniques compromise bandwidth efficiency to ensure reliability, forcing service providers to choose between availability and quality.
Innovation Solution
Implementing terminal-aware adaptive coding and modulation systems that use hierarchical pre-coding schemes and dynamic coding and modulation schemes based on terminal capabilities, allowing for optimized transmission parameters to improve both availability and quality of services by caching data and adapting to individual terminal conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If lower order modulation and coding schemes are used to ensure reliability for terminals with worst link conditions, then availability is improved, but bandwidth efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the data transmission into multiple hierarchical layers (e.g., layer 0, layer 1, layer 2) where each layer can be encoded with different coding and modulation schemes. This allows the system to transmit critical data at reliable lower-order schemes while sending enhancement data at higher-order schemes, resolving the contradiction between availability and bandwidth efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
Different portions of the data stream are assigned different quality levels and encoding parameters. The patent applies local quality by encoding base layer data with robust low-order modulation for reliability, while encoding enhancement layers with higher-order modulation for bandwidth efficiency, allowing each segment to have optimized local characteristics.
2Reliability
If the network transmits information at the most reliable modcode to ensure worst terminal reception, then availability is improved, but the amount of service information transmitted per unit time decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent dynamically adjusts the coding and modulation schemes based on terminal capabilities and link conditions. The system can switch between different encoding strategies depending on whether the terminal has good or poor link conditions, allowing maximum information transmission when possible while ensuring availability when necessary.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a hierarchical dimension to data transmission by organizing data into multiple layers with different encoding requirements. This dimensional approach allows the system to simultaneously serve both reliability-oriented and productivity-oriented transmission needs that would be mutually exclusive in traditional single-layer approaches.
3Reliability
If adaptive coding and modulation is implemented to adapt to changing link conditions, then availability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary actions by pre-configuring multiple coding and modulation schemes before actual transmission occurs. The system prepares hierarchical data structures and encoding parameters in advance, allowing rapid switching between schemes based on link conditions without requiring complex real-time computation during transmission.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and devices are described for using adaptive coding and modulation (“ACM”) to adaptively communicate with a plurality of data terminals having different capabilities. Embodiments provide hierarchical communications of content, generated by applying hierarchical pre-coding schemes to the source data and then associating the pre-coding levels with coding and modulation schemes of varying order. The pre-coding and/or coding and modulation may be based on one or more capabilities of the data terminals in the network. In some embodiments, data terminals may be used to cache certain data intended for other data terminals, for example, to allow time-shifted playback of the content on terminals with varying capabilities.