Using P2P Networks for Error Recovery in MBMS Applications

The wireless networks are notoriously error prone and all errors cannot be prevented in real-time communications. The problem of error correction becomes even more challenging in mobile multicast/broadcast applications. The mobile devices are being equipped with multiple modems that could work simultaneously; for example, devices with both GSM (WAN) and WLAN networks such as WiFi. These multi-modal devices can use the second network to improve their error resilience. We propose a P2P approach to establish and utilize an error recovery channel on a secondary network for multi-user video applications. The mobile devices within the vicinity can utilize the WLAN network to form a P2P network for error recovery purpose. We developed and evaluated three error recovery models for error recovery over secondary networks. The proposed models balance the response time, bandwidth utilization, fairness, and unnecessary data received