Improving MAC-layer error recovery for 3G cellular broadcasts

The error-prone nature of the radio channel is the major challenge in servicing video streams over cdma2000 1×EV-DO broadcast networks. Forward error correction is commonly used when broadcasting a video stream over a lossy network: in BCMCS, the MAC protocol uses Reed-Solomon coding. We analyze the performance of Reed-Solomon error recovery with various parameter settings, and prove the correctness of our analysis through experiment. We also propose a hybrid-ARQ scheme to improve error recovery capacity in the BCMCS environment. Simulation results show a significant reduction in packet loss while quantitatively validating our approach.