The impact of application layer Raptor FEC on the coverage of MBMS

Application layer Raptor FEC has been standardized in 3GPP as mandatory function for MBMS. In this paper, we propose that optimal BLER operation points can be used in this scenario. It means that some small FEC overhead will improve spectrum efficiency and introduce more radio resource savings, which is the bottleneck of the radio network. This is very helpful for operator to expand the coverage of MBMS service area. Simulation results and corresponding numerical results demonstrate the performance gain of Raptor code FEC on MBMS coverage, especially, the spectrum efficiency improvement and the radio resource savings.