Application Layer FEC for Improved Mobile Reception of DVB-H Streaming Services

This paper evaluates the capability of application layer - forward error correction (AL-FEC) with Raptor coding for improving the reception of DVB-H streaming services for mobile terminals. In particular, we exploit the benefits coming from the spatial diversity introduced by terminals´ mobility. We consider the introduction of an additional burst with parity information transmitted several seconds after the original burst. In this way, mobile terminals which are not able to successfully decode the original burst will have an extra chance to recover the missing information by synchronizing to the additional burst. Simulation results show how it is possible to trade system capacity and streaming delay for increased user satisfaction. A comparison with alternative techniques as using MPE-FEC (multi protocol encapsulation - FEC), reducing the modulation and coding rate (MCR) order at the physical layer, and performing burst retransmissions is also included.