Predictable Reliability and Packet Loss Domain Separation for IP Media Delivery

Internet protocol (IP) based media delivery enables applications such as Voice over IP or, most recently, stereoscopic HD-TV. Suchlike transport of typically time-constrained media between two end-points has a number of important characteristics, both on the transport and content side. We focus on live streams of audio-visual data that are assumed as time-constrained and loss-tolerant. We aim at optimizing IP transport over heterogeneous networks by hybrid and loss domain separated error correction with residual error. Hybrid error correction (HEC) approaches the channel capacity dynamically and achieves predictable reliability and predictable delay (PRPD) when residual loss is tolerable, while loss domain separation applies optimally chosen HEC parameters to individual network segments. In this paper, we apply an atomic HEC coding unit to individual segments of network links between source and sink, and show by analysis and example how redundancy is distributed optimally.