Robust streaming erasure codes using MDS constituent codes

Abstract

We revisit two classes of previously proposed robust streaming-erasure codes - MIDAS codes and PRC codes - which guarantee streaming recovery over a class of packet erasure channels. We propose a modified construction for each class using diagonally-interleaved MDS codes. Our proposed codes have near identical performance over deterministic erasure channels, but only require a field size that grows polynomially in the delay. In contrast the previous constructions require that the field size increase exponentially with the delay. We also evaluate the performance of the proposed codes over Gilbert-Elliott channels and show that some penalty does result when finite field size is considered.