Coding for multiple packets in erasure networks

Coding over noisy channels commonly aims at errorfree recovery of all messages. In the present paper we address a different concept: multiple finite-length packets are to be transmitted over a noisy block-fading channel, and the goal is to maximize the number of correctly decoded packets. Specifically, we consider the case of transmission of two messages over a block-fading erasure channel to gain fundamental insights. We consider three different coding strategies and derive analytically the probabilities of error for constructions based on random codes and maximum distance separable (MDS) codes.