Improving Reliable Transmission Throughput with Systematic Random Code

Rateless erasure code (REC) is an erasure code, where the encoder generates a potentially infinite number of encoded symbols and the original message can be reconstructed from a sufficient number of correctly received packets. Many REC-based transmission protocols have been proposed for improving network throughput in lossy channel. However, state-of-the-art RECs (such as LT code and Raptor code) are not efficient for transmitting short messages. Recent studies suggest that network traffic is characterised by bursts of short messages and thus existing transmission protocols do not benefit from the gains of deploying REC. In this paper, we propose an REC-based transmission protocol, namely UDP-RC, which integrates the simplicity of UDP and strength of systematic Random code suited to network traffic with short messages. It attains high throughput by transmitting short messages reliably with lower overheads over lossy channel. We experimentally show that UDP-RC achieves at least 50% higher throughput and maintains more stable throughput compared to TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDT (UDP Data transfer) protocol under both ideal and lossy channel conditions.