An efficient adaptive FEC algorithm for short-term quality control in wireless networks

In error-prone wireless networks, packet errors causes media quality degradation. To enhance media quality in case of packet errors, Forward Error Correction (FEC) mechanisms are the preferred error-control schemes for interactive multimedia applications. However, random error behavior causes unstable media quality so that average quality is not a sufficient metric to represent media quality. In this paper, we first propose a novel short-term quality metric to represent the short-term media quality. Second, based on this metric, we develop adaptive FEC mechanisms to determine appropriate FEC redundancy to protect media packets under various wireless error models. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive FEC mechanisms tolerate most of burst errors to meet the user requirements on media quality with appropriate bandwidth consumption.