XOR coding scheme for data retransmissions with different benefits in DVB-IPDC networks

DVB-H is developed to broadcast digital videos to handheld devices, but data loss is a concern due to the broadcast behavior. On the other hand, DVB-IPDC combines a wireless network with DVB-H to provide bidirectional communications. Such a wireless network can be used to handle data retransmissions and we call it a recovery network. The paper argues that network coding can improve retransmission efficiency of the recovery network since packet loss often exhibits high correlation. Besides, packets are heterogeneous in the sense of priority or importance. Thus, recovering different packets can obtain different benefits. Based on these two arguments, the paper proposes a maximum benefit problem, which asks the base station in the recovery network to use a limited number of coded packets for handheld devices to retrieve their lost packets such that the overall benefit is maximum. An efficient XOR coding scheme is developed to solve this problem. The paper contributes in addressing a new coding issue in DVB-IPDC.