Performance Evaluation of a Hybrid FEC/ARQ for Wireless Media Streaming

Abstract

This paper proposes a link-level hybrid FEC/ARQ based on an adaptive forward error correction (adaptive FEC) algorithm for wireless media streaming, in the hope that the media could be played on receivers with high quality. This model, which uses adaptive forward error correction mechanism at the application layer to adjust to the current network condition, can maximize the performance of wireless multimedia communication. Our simulation results and mathematical analysis show that the hybrid FEC/ARQ achieves better quality of media streaming comparing with FEC alone and ARQ alone, in terms of playable frame rate, reliability and real-time performance on the receiving side.